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ANIMISM 



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ANIMISM 

OR 

THOUGHT CURRENTS OF 
PRIMITIVE PEOPLES 

BY 

GEORGE WILLIAM GILMORE 




BOSTON 
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 

MDCCCCXIX 



<^K' 



COPYRIGHT* I9I9*BY 
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 



THEPI.IHPT0N'P1ESS 
N O K W O O D*M A S S'U'S*A 



JUN 3U iyi9 
©CI.A530 50 



To my Son 



PREFACE 

THE result of recent historical studies, 
whether on anthropological, sociological, 
archeological, or religious lines, has brought 
into ever clearer vision as the substratum of all 
civiHzations that stage of culture from which 
this book takes its title. One consequence 
is: general recognition of animism as a life 
fadlor, the power of which is not yet exhausted, 
the study of which fascinates because of its 
almost infinite variety and its persistent force. 
The words ** animism," "animistic,'* have come 
to fall ever so lightly from tongue and pen and 
meet us at every turn. Yet what animism is 
few who use the term adequately reaHze. 
Though Sir E. B. Tylor in his imperishable 
monograph on Primitive Culture exhibited 
many of its phenomena and blocked out the 
main lines of investigation over forty years ago, 
comparatively few understand its significance 
or are acquainted with its manifestations even 



viii PREFACE 

yet. Fewer still comprehend the doings and 
beliefs as adual or realize the state of mind — 
operations of perception and reason — of those 
whose adls and beliefs we call animistic. 

There seemed to be room, then, for a small 
volume which should exhibit the phenomena 
and the related and inferred behefs of this 
complex stage in a simple manner, with suffi- 
ciently numerous citations to illustrate clearly, 
yet without the overlay of too abundant refer- 
ences. The references here given have been 
drawn almost entirely from very recent and 
authoritative sources gathered in the writer's 
own reading, easily accessible in the current of 
books on travel now pouring from the press. 
Most of the volumes to which reference has 
been made in this discussion belong to the 
twentieth century. Moreover these sources 
are primary. Recourse has seldom been had 
even to so valuable a colledtion of fadls as 
Eraser's quite exhaustive Golden Bough in its 
third edition. The fadls there adduced were 
employed by the talented author for quite 
another end than the present writer's, and this 
might easily have led to confusion. 

What value a knowledge of the features of 
this agglomerate of ads and beliefs has be- 



PREFACE ix 

comes evident when it is remembered that over 
half the population of the globe is animistic in 
its main features of faith and adlion, that a 
large part of humanity entertains beliefs only 
one remove away from this and regards as 
fundamental a philosophy of life grounded in 
animistic thought, and that at least three basal 
tenets of Christianity itself are common to 
Christians and animists. Japanese, Koreans, 
Chinese, the larger part of the population of 
India, the North Asiatic tribes, Oceanicans, 
Africans, and American Indians are, or were 
recently, animists. No stage of culture, no 
great religion, has ever been able to disown 
some of the commonest heirlooms left by 
primitive modes of thinking. From the stand- 
points both of culture and of rehgion animism 
may be described (not defined) as the taproot 
which sinks deepest in racial human experience 
and continues its cellular and fibrous strudlure 
in the tree trunk of modern convidion. It is 
not less important than the surface roots of 
accrued beliefs that branch out on all sides, 
drawing a wide-sourced sustenance, while the 
taproot penetrates the subsoil of man's most 
intimate soul-substance. 

Hardly less interesting is the fad that in 



X PREFACE 

some fundamentals — religious and social — 
the advanced thought of the day is returning 
to some convidlions essential to animistic 
culture. One would not be drawing the long 
bow were he to affirm that in that stage every 
a6l in life had a religious aspedl. Nothing a 
man could do but might be regarded as either 
pleasing to spirits or the reverse. One might 
say that animists went far beyond Matthew 
Arnold's didlum that condudl is three-fourths of 
life — for them it embraced the whole of life. 
That is precisely what advanced thinkers are 
maintaining today, and in that tenet is the 
best promise for improvement in modern con- 
ditions among all classes. 

In another aspedl, too, the social, we are 
returning to early conceptions. Under totem- 
ism, the foundation of which is an animistic 
view of things non-human, the individualism 
that became so marked a feature in some 
philosophies of the last centuries and gave 
impetus even to revolutions was unknown. 
The charadleristic of totemic and derived 
society was much nearer that slogan which has 
now advanced beyond the circle of purely 
socialistic propaganda: "Each for all and all 
for each." 



PREFACE xi 

Theologically also we find ourselves return- 
ing to old, old views of man's relation to the 
supernatural. The comparatively recent doc- 
trine of sin is being discarded. The implaca- 
bility of Deity, the notion of that Deity's 
infinity as the measure of offence, making of 
sin an enormity that clouds eternally the face 
of God and requires an infinite and exadlly 
equivalent penalty, no longer holds the entire 
field. On the other hand, the ad: itself, its 
efFecfl on the doer and his kind, its indelibility 
of effed: on the one side, and the propitiability 
of the offended Spirit, his desire to have man 
reinstate himself in divine favor — the willing- 
ness to come more than half way (to state the 
matter in the language of every-day life) — are 
now standing out in relief. 

It seems hardly necessary to remark that, of 
course, in all these cases the efFed is not that 
of the return of a circle's circumference into 
itself. There has been marked, if spiral, 
progress, progress comparable to that of the 
earth in the solar system toward its distant 
goal in the constellation of Hercules. The one 
encouraging result of this study is that from 
the beginning the heart of man was essentially 
sound, though his vagaries were many during 



xii PREFACE 

the centuries in which he was feeling his way. 
To use a significant term, man has ever been 
essentially theotropic, though he was not 
always conscious of the diredlion of his tropism. 

In studying this subjedl, then, we are engaged 
in discovering the paths our own ancestors have 
trodden, and our gratitude is due them for 
leading us with increasing certitude to a nobler 
way of thought, so that we see in the heavens 
not deities, but the work of One; and in the 
earth the efFedls of that same One's immanence, 
his gift to his sons and daughters. 

The author takes this opportunity to ac- 
knowledge with gratitude the kindness of Mr. 
Francis Medhurst who has read all the proofs 
and offered many valuable suggestions. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Animistic Stage of Culture — 

The Case Stated i 

II. The Discovery of the Soul . . 17 

III. The Soul's Nature 35 

IV. The External or Separable Soul 49 
V. Parity of Being 59 

VI. Belief in "Free Spirits" • • • 95 
VII. "Free Spirits" — Their Constitu- 
tion AND Activities 103 

VIII. Logical Consequences of Parity 

of Being 117 

IX. Death not Always Regarded as 

Inevitable 133 

X. The Continued Existence of the 

Soul 145 

XI. Modifications of the Idea of Con- 
tinuance 153 

XII. Condition of the Discarnate Soul 163 

XIII. The Home of the Soul . . . . 181 

XIV. Descensus Averni 195 

XV. Worship 201 

XVI. Residua of Animism 219 

XVII. Literature to which Reference is 

Made in this Volume .... 229 

Index 243 

xiii 



THE ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CUL- 
TURE—THE CASE STATED 



ANIMISM 

I 

THE ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CUL- 
TURE— THE CASE STATED 

nr^HE following narrative, taken from The 
-*• Japan Weekly for March i6, 1916, 
recounts the story of an event occurring in 
that land of "advanced civilization" in the 
winter of 191 5-16, and some of the sequelae. 

Death of the Suma Snake 

"The huge snake that had been leading a 
precarious existence at the Suma Garden 
during the last three years — a captive in a 
different clime from that in which it was born 
— recently died, unable to bear the rigours of 
the winter. Although the reptile was a mag- 
nificent specimen of its species, as it measured 
25 feet in length and 28 inches round the 
thickest part, it never made itself unpleasantly 
obtrusive and most of its time at Suma was 

3 . -- 



4 ANIMISM, 

spent in lethargic retirement. When the de- 
mise of the snake was made known in the 
neighbourhood much sympathy was mani- 
fested among its many acquaintances, who 
asked the management of the Garden to bury 
the snake in the vicinity with due ceremony. 
It was accordingly interred in the pine groves 
at the rear of the Kagetsu restaurant. 

'* Someone made the discovery on looking 
at an almanac that the day on which the 
reptile died was a Day of the Snake, and 
remembered an old superstition that toothache 
may be cured by worshipping a snake. The 
grave of the Suma snake consequently began 
to be visited by the superstitious, who pro- 
claimed to the world the supernatural means 
of healing toothache by worshipping there. 
The report has since travelled far and wide, 
and scores of people are visiting the grave 
every day, bringing much gain to the Hyogo 
tramway, who need no faith to be assured of 
the benefits accruing from the virtues of the 
departed snake. Some of the people whose 
toothache has been cured by the spirit of the 
snake have decided to build a shrine on the 
ground where the reptile was buried. The 
place has already been fenced in and a sign 



ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 5 

erec5led preparatory to the commencement of 
work." 



The exhibit is therefore that of belief in 
the continued existence and exercise of benevo- 
lent adlivity on behalf of man of a snake 
which had according to our notions passed 
completely out of life and beyond any possible 
potency to affedl human existence. It shows 
one of the characteristic phenomena of the 
stage of culture we are to examine, a stage 
which, as we shall discover, is a present fadl 
over a large part of the globe. 

In Gen. 28: 10-22 occurs the interesting 
account of a night in Jacob's life, his inter- 
pretation of it, and the ensuing course of 
adlion. The two noteworthy events, from 
the present point of view, are (i) the dream, 
with Jacob's conclusion that it revealed to 
him the fadl that the place where he lay was 
an abiding place of deity; (2) the deity was 
evidently in the stone, or was the stone, as is 
shown by the anointing of it. This story 
could be paralleled in its essentials from many 
sources. Again, in Josh. 24: 27, Joshua is 
represented declaring of a certain stone: "it 
hath heard all the words, ... it shall be 



6 ANIMISM 

therefore a witness against you." And, once 
more, Adls 19: 35 makes mention of an objedl 
of worship which "fell from Jupiter," i.e., 
evidently a meteorite. 

These three fadls taken together, viz., the 
importance of a dream and the performance 
of worshipful adls upon or attribution of 
sentience to a stone, bring into notice a cul- 
tural condition, a method of thinking, which 
is by common consent called animistic. Ani- 
^ mism is by many regarded as the earliest form 
which religion took, and as the root from 
which was derived all religious beliefs which 
the world has known, and was also the 
earliest basis of all that is dignified by the 
_^ name of culture. Moreover, we may trace 
*its efFedls and its adlion into the present.^ 
Others, however, regard it as not the primary, 
but as a secondary, stage in mental and reli- 
gious development, seeking the primary in a 
vaguer series of beliefs to which they give the 
name "naturism" or "dynamism." ^ Our pres- 
ent concern is with Animism. 



* McDougall, Body and Mind. A History and Defence of 
Animism. 

2 Cf. Clodd, Animism; and Leuba, A Psychological Study of 
Religion. 



ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 7 

And what is this? Menzies defines it as 
"the worship of spirits as opposed to that of 
Gods." ^ To this E. B. Tylor, whose work ^ 
is facile princeps among the expositions of 
/ animism, might objedt that it supposes a 
\ sharp dividing Hne between spirits and gods 
which has no existence in fadl and is therefore 
arbitrarily drawn. It is, perhaps, impossible 
] to state where the worship of spirits stops 
I and that of gods begins, to decide exadlly 
where the spirit shades into the deity. Who 
can say exadlly the moment when the con- 
ception of a being which has been but one of 
a host of spirits has passed into that of a 
state of divinity? Such transitions have been 
made. 5 Accordingly, Tylor would define an- 
f imism as "the dodlrine of spirits or of spiritual 
beings."^ He furthermore proposes as a min- 
imum definition of religion "belief in spiritual 
beings." ^ While one may criticize this last 
as leaving out the objedlive result of "belief 
in spiritual beings" in worship or cult, Tylor 

' History of Religion, p. 39. 
* Primitive Culture, new ed., London, 1903. 
^ E.g., Enlil of Babylonia; cf. A. Sayce, Hibbert Ledures, 
1887, p. 103. 

^ Primitive Culture, i. 425. 
' lb., i. 324. 



8 ANIMISM 

is altogether right in asserting that, whatever 
the original condition of mankind, such belief 
is found among all races, even the lowest, 
concerning whom exad: knowledge is possessed. 

Just criticism may be passed, however, 
upon Tylor's definition of animism as so vague 
that it gives no grip upon the adlual conditions 
which attend an animistic stage of thought or 
upon that thought itself. It is necessary, 
therefore, to point out that the word represents 
a stage in the psychological development of 
man, in his cultural unfolding, in which his 
conceptions (i) of himself and (2) of the 
world about him differ essentially from those 
of "civilized" man. From the point of view 
of modern psychology, he may be said to 
possess as yet only an unintegrated con- 
sciousness. He does not distinguish himself 
in kind from objedls that are about him. 
As one writer declares: 

"A Central Australian pointing to a photo- 
graph of himself will say, *That one is just 
the same as me, so is a kangaroo (his totem).' 
We say the Central Australian * belongs to 
the kangaroo tribe'; he knows better, he is 
kangaroo. Now it is this persistent affirma- 
tion of primitive man in the totemistic stage 



ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 9 

that he is an animal or a plant, that he is a 
kangaroo or an opossum . . . that instantly 
arrests our attention/' etc.^ 

To man in the advanced stage of thinking 
to which civilized peoples have attained such 
a condition as this appears almost unbeliev- 
able. And yet expert testimony to this efFedl 
is abundantly available. Thus Professor Hob- 
house says of the thinking of men in this stage: 

"One conception melts readily into another, 
just as in primitive fancy a sorcerer turns into 
a dragon, a mouse, a stone, and a butterfly 
without the smallest difficulty. Hence simil- 
arity is treated as if it were physical identity. 
The physical individuality of things is not 
observed. The fadl that a thing was mine 
makes it appear as though there were some- 
thing of me in it, so that by burning it you 
make me smart. The borders or limits of 
things are not marked out, but their influence 
and their capacity to be influenced extends, 
as it were, in a misty halo over everything 
connecfled with them in any fashion. If the 
attributes of things are made too solid and 
material in primitive thought, things them- 
selves are too fluid and undefined, passing 
8 Miss Harrison, Themis, p. 121. 



lo ANIMISM 

into each other by loose and easy identifica- 
tions which prevent all clear and crisp distinc- 
tions of thought. In a word, primitive 
thought has not yet evolved those distindlions 
of substance and attribute, quality and rela- 
tion, cause and efFed, identity and difference, 
which are the common property of civilized 
thought. These categories which among us 
every child soon comes to distinguish in 
pradlice are for primitive thought interwoven 
in wild confusion, and this confusion is the 
intelledlual basis of animism and of magic.'* ^ 
The idea is expressed similarly by Aston: 
"I would describe (primitive man's) mental 
attitude as a piecemeal conception of the 
universe as alive, just as he looks upon his 
fellow man as alive without analyzing him into 
the two distindl entities of body and soul."^° 
The "piecemeal conception of the universe" 
contains the idea that animistic man regards 
other objedls in the world about him as being 
on a parity of existence with himself in that 
they are conceived as having sentient and 
volitional life. He interprets all things in 
terms of his own consciousness. On the 

' Hobhouse, Morals in Evolutiony ii. 20-21. 
" ShintOy p. 26. 



ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE ii 

other hand, pradically all the data in our 
possession which bear upon the subjedl indi- 
^ cate that as far back as we can trace man, 
he had already analyzed his kind into body 
and soul. Even Neolithic man, and with 
great probability also Palaeolithic man, had 
the conception of a possessing or obsessing 
spirit. The trepanning done by Neolithic 
man during life is most easily explicable on 
the theory that disease was caused by a spirit 
which had obsessed the sick, and was to be 
conjured forth only after an incision had been 
made in the skull. The fad: that Kabyles 
have been known within the memory of man 
to perform this operation for this reason, and 
that the modus operandi is in accord with 
other methods among primitive races, can 
lead at once to this conclusion. Up to 1888 
there had been discovered in France in the 
valley of the Torn over two hundred trepanned 
skulls, in many cases among these the tre- 
panning was ante mortem, with evident signs 
of healing. And in the Wellcome Historical 
Medical Museum in London there is a case 
of flint instruments some of which almost 
equal in sharpness of edge and point surgical 
instruments of our own day, used, it is believed 



12 ANIMISM 

for this purpose." We shall find other reasons 

for believing in the early discovery by man of 

his own soul. Meanwhile to prove that is 

not our purpose here. What we are concerned 

with is man's outlook on the universe, his 

estimate of what we call nature. 

"Man in that stage (i.e., the animistic) 

may hold that a stone, a tree, a mountain, a 

stream, a wild animal, a heavenly body, a 

wind, an instrument of the hunt or of labor 

or of domestic utility — indeed, any objedl 

within the range of real or fancied existence 

(and fancy looms large in this domain) — 

possesses just such a soul as he conceives 

himself to have, and that it is animated oy 

desires, moved by emotions, and empowered 

by abilities parallel to those he perceives in 
himself." 12 

Testimonies to this fad might be adduced 
from many quarters and illustrated in many 
ways. Thus: "The African does not believe 
in anything soulless, he even regards matter 
itself as a form of soul, low because not lively." ^^ 

11 Cf. New Tark Medical Journal, Od. i6, 1909, p. 751; 
British Congregationalism May 28, 1914; New Schaff-Herzog 
Encyclopedia, iii. 193-194. 

^ New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, iii. 194; cf. Bros, La 
Religion des peuples non-civilises, chap. II. 

" Miss Kingsley, West African Studies, p. 199. 



r 



ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 13 

Pere Lejeune says that the savages of New 
France "se persuadent que non seulement 
les hommes et les autres animaux, mais que 
les autres choses sont animees." ^^ E. S. 
Hartland puts it this way: ** Starting from 
his personal consciousness, the savage attrib- 
utes the Hke consciousness to everything he 
sees or feels around him."^^ And Reinach is 
equally emphatic: 

"Animism gives a soul and a will to moun- 
tains, rivers, rocks, trees, stones, the heavenly 
bodies, the earth and sky. A tree, a post, 
a pillar, the hollow of a rock, are the seat or 
throne of invisible spirits. These spirits are 
conceived and figured at a later stage under 
animal form, and then under human form. 
A spring was . . . Pegasus, Apollo's horse. 
. , . A river is a bull with a human face. . . . 
The laurel was Daphne, whom Apollo had 
pursued; the oak was Zeus himself, before 
being the tree of Zeus, and Dionysos was 
supposed to live in the tree, after he had 
ceased to be himself the tree. The earth was 
Gaea, emerging from the soil in the shape of a 
woman who implores the sky to water her."^^ 

" Relations de la Nouvelle France, p. 199. 

15 Legend oj Perseus y ii. 441. " Orpheus, p. 79. 



'^ 



14 ANIMISM 

Thus, to give one final testimony, Im Thurn 
says of the Indians of Guiana: 

"It is absolutely necessary to premise here 
that all tangible objecfls, animate . . . and 
inanimate alike, consist each of two separable 
parts — a body and a spirit; and that these 
are not only always readily separable invol- 
untarily, as in death, and daily in sleep, but 
are also, in certain individuals, always volun- 
tarily separable." ^^ 

The preceding, then, affords a prima facie 
basis for a tentative definition of animism, 
the justification or demonstration of which 
must wait for a later chapter. We assume 
that "animism" stands for a stage of culture 
in which man may regard any obje(fly real or 
imaginary, as possessing emotional, volitional, 
and adlional potency like that he himself pos- 
sesses. Things, of whatsoever sort, he may 
consider the subjecfls of feelings — likes and 
dislikes, appetites or disinclinations, afFedlions 
or antipathies, desires and longings; of will 
— to help or injure, to ad: or refrain from 
acfling; and of the power to adl according to 
the promptings of these feelings and the 
determinations of will. 

^' Im Thurn, Indians of Guiana^ p. 329. 



ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 15 

' But — animism is thought. The enormous 
significance of these three words must not be 
overlooked. They mark the difference be- 
tween man and the whole creation beneath 
him. The whole chain of acfls implied in 
the word under discussion involves mental 
processes passing over into adlion with well 
defined intention having their issue in the 
future and being immeasurably removed from 
instincfl. It is true that we shall find this 
thought at times pitifully infantile, paralleled 
by the conceptions in some cases of four-year- 
olds of the present ;^^ but it is still thought. 
And we shall show that reason is on the throne. 
The outcome of this discussion will, it is be- 
lieved, show the general logicality of primitive 
man's mental processes, once the basis from 
which he starts is granted. The beliefs in 
ghosts, spirits, gods, in transmigration and 
metempsychosis, are not the chance hit or miss 
conclusions of early man, but flow rationally 
from the premise we have assumed. That 

^ The Chicago Tribune reports that " during a sudden thunder- 
storm a little four-year-old came running into the Kindergarten, 
crying as if her heart would break. When the Kindergartner 
asked the cause of her trouble, she said, 'O Miss E., the sky 
barked at me.'" 



i6 ANIMISM 

this reason is often aberrant in its premises, 
that it is not seldom fitfully inconsequent, 
may indeed appear. But what we find is 
reason, thought at least of a kind, and in many 
cases frightfully logical. 



II 

THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOUL 



II 

THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOUL 

ON THE hypothesis that the method of 
man's creation was evolution, that he is 
the finest producfl of nature's forces working in 
continuous upward striving, how are we to 
explain man's arrival at the realization of soul 
or spirit, of something which is intelligently 
and not merely instind:ively directive of adlion ? 
The possession of soul, in this sense, by even 
the highest animals is disallowed by scientists ; 
though recognition is growing that elements 
that are acknowledged to belong to the in- 
telledlual and even to the moral powers already 
exist in brute psychology. Such elements are 
shame or chagrin, and fear of what seems to 
the animal what we might call the uncanny. 
The writer remembers a scene in Meadville, Pa., 
where as reminiscences of a former iron foundry 
there exist in some of the dooryards castings of 
dogs. One day notice was attracfled by a 
street cur which had stopped a few feet distant 
from one of these cast-iron dogs. The cur was 

19 



20 ANIMISM 

"pointing" at the image and wagging rapidly 
his short tail in the manner of dogs intimating 
friendly intentions towards another dog, and 
desire for acquaintance with it. Seeing no 
hostile demonstrations on the part of the ac- 
quaintance-to-be, he went up to the iron 
replica slowly, smelt of it, and at once dropped 
his apology for a tail and made oflF with chagrin 
plainly stamped in his entire demeanor. Mr. 
Romanes tells of a trick on a pet dog that was 
fond of playing with bones, which it would 
worry and toss and growl at, evidently making 
believe that they were alive. The owner tied 
a thin but strong thread to the bone with which 
it was one day playing, and after a little time, 
when the dog had cast the bone some distance 
away and was creeping up to it as to an objed: 
of prey, he began gently to pull the string. 
The manner of the dog changed at once, first 
evidently in surprise; then it continued to 
crawl up to investigate. But as the bone con- 
tinued to retreat, the dog finally withdrew and 
hid under the furniture. ^ The animal evidently 
recognized (i) that the bone was lifeless, inert, 
therefore (2) unendowed with power of motion. 
But (3) this thing had moved, and fear (dread 

* Cited by Clodd, in Animism, pp. 22-23. 



DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 21 

of the unknown) entered evidently as the 
result of a sort of rational process. It will be 
noted that this case is to be differentiated 
from those where fear enters as the result of 
punishment, in which case the "fear" may be 
only the result of association of ideas and the 
formation of "instindlive" habit. There was 
manifestation of chagrin in the first case 
cited, for such was the clear impression 
furnished when the animal looked back at 
the witnesses of the scene as they burst into 
laughter; and of fear in the second case, 
since the animal showed what in a human 
being we should call superstitious apprehen- 
sion. There is therefore no adequate reason 
for denying to primeval man a large degree of 
rationality, growing in extension and intension 
with enlarging experience and exercise. He 
was no longer sheer animal. Of course, it 
was by achievement of rationality, in however 
small degree, that he became man. He was 
no longer a mere observer — animals are 
observant — but a thinker, who reflected and 
reasoned, however faultily, upon his observa- 
tions. The salient mark of his differentiation 
from the animal lies in his recognition of 
possession of this quality. Before this, re- 



22 ANIMISM 

lapse into sheer animality was perhaps possible; 
after it, such relapse is inconceivable. How 
then did this come about? 

The answer most in favor with anthropolo- 
gists is that it began (i) with the phenomena 
of sleep — (a) the evident difference between 
that state and waking life, combined with 
(b) the occurrence of dreams which often so 
closely mimic or deal with the adlive and 
conscious existence of the individual ;2 and 
(2) in the difference between the living and the 
dead. It is to be recognized that (la) and 
(2) are compared and combined in the logic 
of the savage, and afford new ground for his 
belief in something apart from and different 
from the body which eventually becomes 
known as soul. Through observation often 
repeated, and through reasoning and reflection 
upon the facfts thus presented, man arrived 
at the conclusion that he is himself a dual 
being, possessing body and (what was even- 
tually recognized as) soul or spirit. Having 
arrived at this conclusion, he deduced from 

2 Cf. the dreams of Pharaoh's butler and of his baker, as 
narrated in Gen. 39; each of the individuals dreams of matters 
conneded with his specific duties. 



DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 23 

experience and observation, or else jumped 
to the conclusion, that other objedls were 
similarly constituted; he might attribute life, 
soul, intention, and adlion to each and every 
objedl, to any objedl, that came under his 
observation, no matter what its constitution. 
It may be remarked, en passant, that the 
dream life of man is separated from that of 
animals probably only by the charadler of 
the content of his dream, as it reproduces or 
recomposes experiences registered in the (con- 
scious or unconscious, subliminal) memory. 
It is well known that some animals dream. 
The twitching of the muscles or the whining 
or even barking of a dog in sleep has often 
been noticed, and is explicable best on the 
hypothesis of a dream. If animals dream 
and exhibit elements of consciousness, there 
is every reason to carry back to a very early 
period in human history the beginning of 
the chain of thinking that, on the hypothesis 
here presented, led to the conception of spirit 
or soul as animating physical objedls. 

How this could come about is abundantly 
illustrated from the interpretations of dream 
phenomena by primitive peoples. The dream 
life of a savage being is conditioned by his 



24 ANIMISM 

waking existence, it mirrors more or less 
perfectly the life he leads. It is very probable 
that the dreams of savages mimic even more 
closely the waking existence than those of 
man in a more advanced stage of culture. 
The reason for this is that the primitive mode 
of existence is less complex. Fewer elements 
of interest go to make up life, and the course 
of events is more uniform. Mr. F. Granger 
remarks: "If yesterday was like the day 
before, and is going to be repeated in a thou- 
sand tomorrows, the dreams which echo the 
life of the past will presage, with fair accuracy, 
the life of the days to come. Add to all this 
that the primitive mind distinguishes with 
difficulty []we should prefer to say, distin- 
guishes not at alQ between what is real and 
what is imagined p.e., to the savage the dream 
and the vision of the night are equally real 
with the sights and experiences of his waking 
hours] and we can understand why the dream 
existence is often placed on a level with that 
of waking hours.^ Lying down to rest, the 
savage dreams of the chase or of the search 
for vegetable food. On awaking he tells his 

^ Worship of the Romansy pp. 28-29; cf. Fiske, Myths and 
Myth-makers, p. 18. 



DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 25 

companions that he has been away on a hunt 
or the Hke, and relates the adventures through 
which he beHeves he has passed. But his 
companions assure him that his body has 
been with them all the time, and both he and 
they naturally deduce a dual existence — an 
invisible soul, usually inhabiting but on occa- 
sion leaving a visible body.* Here then is 
one almost certain source of the idea of soul. 
How conclusive such reasoning is to the 
primitive mind, how firmly the savage believes 
in the dream as consisting of adlual experience, 
may be seen in the comparatively exhaustive 
colledlion of cases by Dr. J. G. Frazer.^ Thus 
an Indian dreamed that at his master's orders 
he had (during the night) hauled a canoe up 
a series of rapids, and next morning reproached 
the master for making him work so hard in 
the hours appropriated to rest.^ To this 
savage the dream was real and the toil ex- 
hausting. Of the adluality of the belief in 
the absence of the soul during sleep there is 
abundant evidence. Numerous peoples in a 

^ Cf. Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 122, 
135-136. Gomes, Seventeen Tears among the Sea Dyaks of 
Borneo, p. 177. 

5 Taboo, chap. V. 

^ lb., pp. 36, 37; cf. Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 161. 



26 ANIMISM 

lowly stage of culture use caution in awaking 
a sleeper. It is held that his soul is away, 
and that he must be aroused gradually so 
that the soul may have time to return; the 
same reasoning applies to infants.^ Melane- 
sians explain the phenomena of a fainting fit 
in the same way, holding that such cases 
indicate premature death, but that the soul 
was not yet wanted in the spirit world and 
so was sent back to earth.^ 

A different source of the idea of soul is 
found in the phenomena of death, powerfully 
reenforcing the dedudions made from sleep 
and dreams. While in the one case there 
was seen the inertness of the body, perhaps 
with breathing hardly perceptible, which yet 
was experiencing dreams that were interpreted 
as the activity of the absent soul; in the 
other there was noted the expiring breath and 
the subsequent inertness of the body, only 
more pronounced than in sleep, passing into 
rigidity and finally into decay. Adlion had 
ceased with that last exhalation. If in sleep 
the dream was interpreted as absence of 



' Frazer, Tahoo, pp. 39-42; Roscoe, The Baganda, p. 
Seligmann, Melanesiansy pp. 189 fF. 
* Brown, Mdanesians, pp. 192 flF. 



i8; 



DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 27 

soul, much more applicable would that inter- 
pretation seem when the bystanders had 
noted the last breath and the (consequent) 
absence of motion, adlion, speech, life. Some- 
thing had gone away with the last sigh, 
something unseen, the absence of which 
brought about a great change. That man 
lying there — companion, husband, father, 
brother, friend — used to live and move and 
talk and breathe. He was wont to respond 
to call and to read: to the various stimuli 
about him. Now calls were unheard, appeals 
brought no reply, promptings met no response. 
And the difference was brought about (so men 
reasoned) by the absence of that which had 
issued forth unseen, never to return, at least 
to its former home, as survivors would observe. 

But the full consequences of observance of 
the phenomena of death in the diredion under 
investigation are not seen till we take into 
account certain other phases of human falli- 
bihty. Particularly is it necessary to note 
primitive man's relatively smaller experience 
and confused perceptions, and the aberrant 
conclusions often drawn from these.® 

Most men are and always have been defi- 

' Granger, Worship of the Romansy pp. 28-29. 



28 ANIMISM 

cient in power both of observation and of 
f deduction, (i) They assume as real many 
; things that do not exist, events that do not 
i occur, and relations that have no reality. 
Illustrations are found in the belief in the 
existence of a directive power in the objedl 
picked up by the fetish worshiper, the super- 
stition of the Celt that a fairy has left in the 
place of his own baby a fairy changeling,^^ and 
the belief in the descent of a human gens 
from, e.g., eagle, fox, or snake, as in totemism. 
Similarly boys of Mafulu, New Guinea, while 
making a drum must drink only what is 
found in axils of certain plants, else the 
embers which are to hollow out their drums 
will not burn — drinking any other water 
will put it out, or certain other restridlions 
are felt to be necessary." (2) They take 
obvious fadls and interpret them wrongly. 
Thus in the mediaeval ordeal of the sacrament 
(a late example chosen only because of its 
familiarity, but exemplifying perfectly earlier 
conditions; the phenomena can be parallelled 
in any quarter of the world and every grade 
of culture) the sacramental wafer was employed 

^^ Rhys, Celtic Folk-lore, p. 102. 

" Williamson, South Sea Savage, pp. 258-259. 



DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 29 

as a proof of innocence or guilt. Constridlion 
of the throat and inability to swallow was 
often the result of the administration of the 
wafer. If it did not result, deity was held to 
have shown the innocence of the accused; if it 
did, guilt was declared manifest. How really 
irrelative this test was to the fadls is shown by 
the frequent experience of inability to swallow 
a medicinal pill or tablet without the aid of a 
liquid to **wash it down.'' Yet here is no 
question of innocence or guilt. The explana- 
tion is that attention to the ad: of swallowing 
(which is usually effortless and automatic) 
causes eflFort and so constricflion. Swallowing 
in the ordeal was doubtless sometimes im- 
possible just for the reason given here; but 
deity did not intervene, guilt or innocence 
was not necessarily revealed by this fad:, nor 
did inability to swallow necessarily result 
from guilt — the innocent might also find 
the task difficult simply because of the atten- 
tion direded to it. 

On the difference in resped of observational 
and reasoning power of savage and highly 
civilized man let Grant Allen speak. 

"To us the conception of human life as a 
relatively short period, bounded by a known 



30 ANIMISM 

duration, and naturally terminated at a fixed 
end, is a common and familiar one. We 
forget, however, that to the savage this is 
quite otherwise. He lives in a small and 
scattered community, where deaths are rare, 
and where natural death is comparatively 
infrequent. Most of his people are killed in 
war, or devoured by wild beasts, or destroyed 
by accident in the chase, or by thirst or 
starvation. Some are drowned in rapid rivers; 
some crushed by falling trees or stones; some 
poisoned by deadly fruits, or bitten by veno- 
mous snakes; some massacred by chiefs or 
murdered in quarrels with their own tribesmen. 
In a large majority of instances there is some 
open and obvious cause of death, and this 
cause is generally due either to the hand of 
man or to some other animal; or failing that, 
to some apparently adlive effort of external 
nature, such as flood or lightning or forest 
fires or landslip or earthquake." ^^ 

Man recognized his own volitional agency 
in causing death in the chase or in personal 
conflids. So to each of the agencies which 
had produced disaster he attributed powers 
like his own — the volitional behind the 
. ' 12 Evolution of the Idea of God, pp. 44-45. 



DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 31 

physical. He had, perhaps, himself narrowly 
escaped the fate he had seen befall others and 
ascribed his escape to his own cleverness. 
But not all of his acquaintances had suflFered 
what we should call a violent death. Some 
had passed away in disease or even in old age. 
Surely it was evident, one would say, that no 
external cause was at work there. But that 
was not his way of thinking. He knew of 
unseen powers that send or are the wind, 
the storm, the lightning.^^ And so the body 
that was racked with pain and eventually 
became inert in death was held to be tortured 
by an invisible something. In many cases, 
he knew, death resulted from external violence; 
in all cases, he reasoned, the great change 
was wrought by powers external to the victim, 
which sometimes worked with invisible 
weapons.^* 

Bearing in mind, then, the faulty observation 
and logic of primitives, and connecfling the 
two sources of the idea of soul previously 
discussed, viz. (i) sleep and dreams, and 
(2) the phenomenon of death, together with 

" The Ekoi of South Africa regard thunder as a giant who 
strides across the heavens, while lightning is either his servant 
or his enemy. Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 73. 

" See chapter IX for cases of disbelief in natural death. 



32 ANIMISM 

(3) the inference therefrom of a something 
that leaves the body either temporarily in 
sleep or permanently in death, we are brought 
to notice next what apparently corroborated 
the evidence (as it would seem) respecting 
the existence of soul, that is, the appearance 
in dreams of those who had died. This was 
in all probability a more frequent occurrence 
with early than with modern man, because 
of the smaller content of his experience and 
the consequent more frequent repetition of 
its elements. We have already remarked 
that the distinction between reality and fancy, 
fac5l and the merely apparent, is often missed 
in early cultural stages. It was quite in 
accordance with natural logic to reason that 
.the apparition in the dream was real. The 
I dead, therefore, still lived, had been seen, 
and had possibly engaged in conversation. 
The wandering spirit of the dreamer had met 
the disembodied spirit; or the latter had 
visited his former friends while they slept. ^^ 
The tremendous consequences flowing from 
these beliefs will be developed a little later. 

By these various experiences, dovetailing 
and appearing to force a conclusion, man 

*^ Lang, The Making of Religion, pp. 54 ff. 



DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 33 

certainly in a very primitive stage of culture 
drew the inference that he was a duality — 
the body which he could see and feel, and a 
something of which in his conscious existence 
he knew nothing except that it existed. More- 
over, it is demonstrable that among many 
primitive peoples the priority in importance 
is assigned to the spirit. Thus of the New 
Guineans it is affirmed: "These and other 
things [^specified in the context] seem to show 
that a sharp distinction is drawn between 
body and spirit by the natives. Certainly 
the body gains from long associations virtues 
from the indwelling spirit; but it is ^he spirit 
which is the real man, higher than, and 

superior to, the body in which the spirit 
dwells." 16 

One can not go far astray if he maintain 
that it was the discovery of the soul which 
was the most momentous in the history of 
the human race; to it must be traced all 
man's uplift in the millenniums of his existence. 
" Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 194. 



Ill 

THE SOUL'S NATURE 



Ill 

THE SOUL'S NATURE 

AN important inquiry meets us at this 
point: How did man think of this 
second something that usually inhabited his 
body but sometimes left it for a time and at 
death left it permanently? For it would 
soon have been borne in upon him (even though 
he did not consciously recognize the soul's 
presence and operations) that the permanent 
absence of soul meant death, and that there- 
fore while he lived it was present. What did 
he think concerning the nature of this all- 
important part of him? It is very clear from 
a number of circumstances that the notion of 
the soul was governed by the phenomenon 
of death. Decisive upon this point is the 
wonderful accord of meaning in so many 
languages of the word which expresses this 
inner elusive reality. In the developed lan- 
guages we may note the root idea of such 
words as the Latin spiritus, anima, animus, 

37 



38 ANIMISM 

Irish anam, Sanskrit atman, Greek psyche^ 
pneumay thumos, German Geisty Dutch geesty 
EngHsh ghosty Hebrew nepheshy ruahy Sumerian 
zidy Babylonian napishtUy Egyptian knephy 

j all of which go back to the notion of breath, 
or of a gentle movement of air or wind. One 
may forage at large and observe the same 
root notion and a similar usage in many other 
different regions, discovering the Australian 
wangy Mohawk atonritZy Californian-Oregonian 
wkrishuy piutSy Dakotan niyay Javanese nazvay 
Aztec ehecatly Nicaraguan julioy Gypsy duky 
and Finnish far. This line of thought is 
fortified by the conception of the insubstan- 

■ tiality of the soul, expressed in such words 
as skidy umhray and "shade,'' used to denote 
the disembodied spirit. Terms of similar 
content were used not only by the cultured 
Greeks and Romans, but are known to be 
employed among North American Indians, 
Zulus and Basutos in Africa, among the Cala- 
bars, and elsewhere. One recalls the Hebrew 
rephaim. The survival of the belief in the 
insubstantiality of the disembodied spirit till 
the Middle Ages is shown by Dante, for 
according to him the souls in purgatory knew 
that the poet had not passed through death 



THE sours NATURE 39 

by the fadl that his figure cast a shadow. 
Indeed, the idea of communication by a 
disembodied spirit with the Hving in dreams 
was entrenched by the refledlion that its very 
immateriahty enabled it to hold communica- 
tion with sleeping persons without arousing 
them from sleep. 

How early man came to realize that this 
part which is designated by breath or pufF of 
air is his real self is impossible to say. But 
what is significant is that in many languages 
the word meaning spirit, life, or breath has 
also the connotation "self," as has, e.g., the 
Hebrew nephesh. And how natural such a 
signification is can be illustrated by the 
concrete fadl that Laura Bridgman, the blind- 
deaf-mute, is said to have expressed the 
thought of death in a dream by the statement 
that "God took away my breath to heaven." 
Among the Ekoi of Nigeria ghost and soul and 
breath are connected as phases of the same 
thing or as equivalents. One must not forget 
jthat the phenomenon of death which is most 
obvious is the expiring sigh or last breath, 
after the departure of which life ceases to 
exist. What more natural than that the 
breath thus finally exhaled should be associated 



40 ANIMISM 

I with the soul or spirit, or, as in some cases, 
be thought to carry the soul with it? Since 
in dreams a person deceased has been seen 
and addressed while the body was known to 
have dissolved, the way is dired: and the step 
short to the conclusion that the self, the real 
person, is that same breath or soul.^ 

But did primitive peoples endow the soul 
with form? The testimony to this is abundant 
and cogent.2 The most natural and perhaps 
most common idea of the soul's shape is that 
it is a miniature of the possessor's form. 
Among those who have held this belief are 
American Indians such as the Hurons, the 
natives of British Columbia, Alaska, and the 
Esquimaux of the distri(5ts adjacent to Behring 
Straits, islanders such as the Niassians near 
Sumatra and the Fijians, and continental 
dwellers such as the Malays and West Africans. 
To give a single example, Nigerian Etoi 
believe that "when a man's body decays a 
new form comes out of it, in every way like 
the man himself when he was above ground." ^ 

1 Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 230. 

2 It has been colleded not only by Tylor in his Primitive 
Culture, but also by Frazer, Taboo, chap. II. 

2 Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 17, 230; cf. Frazer, 
Tabooy p. 39. 



THE sours NATURE 41 

For the Egyptians abundant testimony is 
available as to the belief in the double, existing 
indeed from birth/ There is a picture in the 
Roman catacombs portraying the death of a 
Christian, in which the soul is represented as 
leaving the mouth of the dying in a cloud-like 
shape that takes his own form. What is 
pradically a replica of this is found on the 
walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa; and in 
the east transept of Salisbury Cathedral on 
the sculptured monument over the tomb of 
Bishop Giles de firidgport the soul appears 
as a naked figure carried by an angel.^ The 
usual notion is that the soul is invisible. But 
as in other respecfls shamans or medicine men 
are credited with extraordinary powers, so 
they are supposed to be able to discern the 
spirits or souls moving about or endeavoring 
to escape from the body. Sometimes the 
organ of detection is the ear, which can note 
the motion of the soul's wings. Or, the soul 
being of human shape, it leaves faint foot- 
marks as indications of its presence, and light 

^ A notable case among many is the bas-relief in the temple 
at Luxor, exhibiting the presentation at birth to Ra of the royal 
child Amenhotep III and his double. Cf. Budge, Osirisy etc., 
p. 119. 

^ Clodd, Animism^ p. 40. 



42 ANIMISM 

ashes strewn on the ground may betray its 
presence to the keen-sighted medicine man. 

Mention has been made of the return of the 
soul of one deceased to the haunts of the body 
as evidenced by dreams. The form appearing 
in the dream was recognized as that of a 
friend, again testifying to the assumed fad: 
that the soul has the shape of the body. 
Further testimony to this belief is found in 
the faith that the soul is held to suffer in 
some degree the fate of the body. BraziHan 
Indians, for example, believe that the soul 
arrives in the other world hacked and torn, 
or uninjured, exadlly as was the condition of 
the body at death.^ Australians tie together 
the toes and bind together the thumbs behind 
the back, or mutilate the body and fill it with 
stones, or, again, they lop off the thumb of a 
slain enemy, that the ghost may not hurl 
shadowy spear or pull the bowstring in the 
land of spirits.^ Chinese and Africans abhor 
mutilation, especially decapitation, as a punish- 
ment, for the latter produces headless ghosts.^ 
And Shakespeare makes Macbeth cry out: 

" Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guianay passim. 
' Cases of the kind are cited in Frazer, The Dying God, 
pp. lo-ii; and Howitt, Native Tribes^ pp. 449, 474. 
* Cf. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 281-282. 



THE sours NATURE 43 

** Shake not thy gory locks at me." The 
ghost retains the bloody form in which the 
body was left at its departure. From classical 
Greece and Rome the evidence for this same 
idea of the soul's form is abundant and cogent; 
and it would not be difficult to show, since 
so much has been revealed in the frescoes and 
vase paintings recovered in the Mediterranean 
region, that this idea comes down from very 
primitive times. In the paintings which repre- 
sent Hermes Psychopompus direding the issue 
and return of souls, the latter are figured as 
winged mannikins, coming from or returning 
to burial jars.^ The form of Patroklos* shade 
was that of the living hero.^^ 

A notion closely akin to the foregoing is 
that which conneds the soul with the shadow. 
While many curious ideas which gather around 
the latter — such as the Brahman belief that 
the shadow of a pariah falling on food defiles 
it — do not involve the identity of the two, 
in many cases there can be little doubt that 
soul and shadow are not only closely related 
but are regarded as identical. Some believe 
that an assault upon the shadow may be fatal 

' Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 43, and Themis, p. 205. 
1° Iliad, xxiii. 65 fF. 



44 ANIMISM 

to its possessor, or at least extremely harmful. 
The Indians of the lower Frazer River hold 
that man has four souls, of which one is the 
shadow. The Euahlayi of Australia believe 
that man has a dream spirit, a shadow spirit, 
perhaps an animal spirit, and one that leaves 
only at death. ^^ Other Australians consider 
that each individual has a choi, a sort of 
disembodied soul, and a ngai, which lives in 
the heart. The choi awaits reincarnation 
after death, the ngai passes immediately after 
death into the children of the deceased. It is 
the latter that sometimes leaves a person 
temporarily in his lifetime, e.g., when he 
faints. The choi has some sort of vague 
relationship with the shadow.^^ The Kai of 
New Guinea also believe that man has two 
souls,^^ as do some of the Fijians, one of these 
being light (as a refledlion in the water), the 
other dark, like the shadow.^^ Dyaks assert 
the possession of three or even of seven, 
souls; one may leave the body tempor- 
arily, the man dies only when all leave.^^ 

" Mrs. Parker, Euahlayi Tribe, p. 35. 
^ Frazer, Belief in Immortality , i. 129. 
" Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 112. 
" Williams, Fiji, i. 242. 

^^ Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 177; cf. Hastings, ERE, vi. 
226. j 



THE sours NATURE 45 

Gilyaks may have three souls. The Balong 
of the Cameroon think that one may have 
several souls, one in his own body and others 
in different animals. The death of one of 
these animals, say, at the hand of a hunter 
causes the man's death. ^^ The equivalence of 
the shadow to the man himself is proved by 
its use (or that of its dimensions, in a later 
stage of culture) in the same manner as the 
body in foundation sacrifice — to give stability 
to the strudlure. After an exacflly similar 
manner of thought the refledlion of a body in 
water or a mirror is regarded as the soul. 
Injury to refledlion or shadow may result in 
injury to the corresponding member of the 
body. Among the Congo people shadow or 
picture or refledlion is the equivalent of soul.^^ 
This whole manner of thought explains why 
in so many regions the natives do not willingly 
submit to being photographed or represented 
on canvas.^^ 

While the usual mode of thought represents 

" Globus, Ixix (1896), 277, cited In Hastings, EREy iv. 412- 

413. 

17 Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals, p. 162; cf. Talbot, In the 
Shadow of the Bushy p. 230. 

1* Cases cited in Frazer, Golden Bough, Part II; Taboo, ii. 
77-100. 



46 ANIMISM 

the human soul as a mannikin, other ideas 
are found. Among the ancient Egyptians, 
in Brazil, in Melanesia, in Bohemia, Malaysia, 
Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and elsewhere the 
shape of the spirit may be that of a bird;^® 
in British Columbia the bird is enclosed in an 
egg in the nape of the neck. Or the soul may 
take the form of a mouse (Brunswick, Tran- 
sylvania, Swabia, Saxony), which may diflPer 
in color in different regions; or of a fly (Tran- 
sylvania), a lizard (India), or an indistindt 
cloudy form (Scotland )}^ Greeks and Serbs 
thought of the soul also as a butterfly, and 
the Greek name for one species of this insed 
is Psyche. 

As to the constitution of this part of 
man's duality there is a wide consensus along 
the lines already indicated. Primitive peoples 
throughout the world describe it as a vapor, 
a shadowy, filmy substance, related to the 
body as the perfume to the flower. It is pale 
and yielding to the touch, without flesh and 
bone, thin, impalpable, discerned as the figure 
in the human eye. Its movements may be 

" Bros, La Religion des peuplfs non-civilises, p. 54. 

2° Miller, My Schools and Schoolmasters, pp. 106-107, cited by 
Frazer, Taboo, pp. 40-41; Brown, Melanesians, pp. 141 flp. — here 
bird, rat, lizard, etc., are forms the soul takes. 



THE SOUL'S NATURE 47 

as swift as the wind, and so it is sometimes 
regarded as winged. Yet it has a certain 
materiality, and consequently has necessities. 
After death, for instance, it needs nourishment 
and partakes of the spirit, the essential part, 
of the material things sometimes provided 
for it. Egyptians, carrying the idea still 
further, provided picflures or models of food, 
furniture, and the like, which in a similar way 
became available to the spirit. The semi- 
materiality of the soul is illustrated by the 
fadl of the return to his temple being known 
by marks alleged to be found in maize flour 
strewed on the threshold of his temple- 
pyramid.^^ 

21 Spence, Civilization of Ancient Mexico^ p. 47. 



IV 

THE EXTERNAL OR SEPARABLE 
SOUL 



IV 

THE EXTERNAL OR SEPARABLE 
SOUL 

IF what precedes be accepted, it can be 
taken as established that primitive man, 
or at least man in an early stage of culture, 
determined himself to be a duality, soul and 
body. But the two constituents did not 
appear to be inseparably conneded. The 
soul might leave the body, either temporarily 
or permanently, and in the latter case the 
body perished. The presence of the soul is 
therefore essential to life. But incidentally 
reference has been made to the absence of 
the soul for periods usually brief. In fadl, 
primitive races hold that the soul absents 
itself voluntarily at times, goes on travels, 
performs tasks, and the like; and also that 
some have the power to send forth the soul — 
their own or others' — for their own purposes. 
It may even happen that the soul is either 
lured forth or departs unwisely, and has to 
return. In New Guinea when a person faints, 

SI 



52 ANIMISM 

he is said to be dead; and when he revives, 
the explanation is that he "died green/* and 
perhaps because the soul was not wanted in 
the spirit land, it had to take up again its old 
life with the body.^ For the wandering of 
the soul in dreams there is abundant testi- 
mony, — so abundant, in fadl, that we will 
content ourselves with a single reference.^ 
The Japanese are persuaded that this same 
constituent of personality leaves the body 
that it may sport itself untrammelled.^ The 
satirist Lucian and the scientist Pliny relate 
the story of the seer Hermotimus, who sent 
forth his spirit to explore distant regions. 
At last, during an unwontedly long absence, 
his wife supposed him to be dead and burned 
his body, so that on its return the spirit 
found no dwelling for itself.^ A slightly 
different case is that reported of the Scandina- 
vian chief Ingimund, who shut up three Finns 
that their spirits might visit Iceland, discover 
the lie of the land where he proposed to settle, 
and report to him on their return. An in- 

* Newton, In Far New Guinea^ p. 220. 

^ Kingsley, West African Studies^ pp. 200 ff. 
' Griffis, Mikado's Empire y p. 472. 

* Cited by Tylor, Primitive Culturey \. 439; cf. Jevons, Intror 
dudion, pp. 44 fF., and the cases there cited. 



THE EXTERNAL SOUL 53 

stance like that of Hermotimus is the case 
of Epimenides, the Cretan prophet and magi- 
cian, who was reputed to be able to dispatch 
his spirit in quest of knowledge and recall it 
at will.^ And Hermotimus had in recent 
years an African disciple, whose exploits were 
worthy, if reports are to be credited, of his 
unknown master.^ 

Since belief in the absence of the soul, at 
least for a temporary period, could be held 
over so wide an area and even among com- 
paratively developed peoples, it is not sur- 
prising that there should arise a belief in the 
existence of the animating spirit seated not 
in the body, but in some place where security 
would be greater. The evidences are many 
of a belief that the soul might reside either 
from birth or from some later period in some 
objedl other than its normal home. This is 
the phenomenon known to anthropologists as 
the "external" or "separable" soul. A dilu- 
tion of this is the form which is christened "the 
life token," in which the clouding of a liquid 
or the tarnishing of a weapon is the sign 
either of danger, sickness, or death of the 

^ Hesychius, Lexikon, under "Epimenides." 
^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 23 1. 



54 ANIMISM 

person for whom the liquid or object stands. 
It can be shown, however, in most cases, that 
when the Ufe token is the center of the story, 
it is the result of an advanced stage of culture, 
if it is not diredlly stated that such objedl is 
the residence of the soul. 

The earliest example of this belief so far 
known to literature occurs in the Egyptian 
tale of **Anpu and Bata, or the Two 
Brothers." ^ The younger brother commits 
his soul apparently to the keeping successively 
of acacia flowers, of a bull, and then of two 
trees, while a chip from one of the latter 
causes conception. Another view of the latter 
experiences, however, is that they are cases 
of transmigration. The case of the Balong of 
the Cameroons who believe that a man may 
have several souls, one in his own body and 
others in different animals of the jungle, has 
already been cited. It is quite usual for 
them to account for a man's sudden death 
by supposing that one of his soul-containing 
animals has been killed by a hunter.^ Fre- 
quent in folk-lore is the theme of the wicked 
and oppressive ogre or giant or wizard who 

' Petrie, Egyptian Tales, id series, pp. 48 fF. 

* Globus, 69 (1896), 277, cited in Hastings, ERE, 4, 412-413. 



THE EXTERNAL SOUL 55 

holds in his power maiden or youth, and is 
invincible to ordinary attack because his soul 
is safe-guarded in an egg inside a duck that 
swims on a pond in a distant island guarded 
by a dragon within a walled and inaccessible 
fortress. Not until the many obstacles have 
been overcome and the egg obtained is the 
luckless maiden or youth released by the 
crushing of the egg and the consequent im- 
mediate demise of ogre, giant, or wizard. 
This theme of a receptacle strongly guarded 
(though in this case it is not a soul, but the 
"Book of Thoth," a book of magic) comes, 
curiously enough, in its earliest form from 
Egypt, and suggests that this idea of an 
objedl, and perhaps the separable soul, secured 
by many safeguards, may have been a particu- 
larly widely diflFused idea. The "Book of 
Thoth" was in an iron box, which enclosed 
successively one of bronze, of kete-wood, of 
ivory and ebony, of silver, and last of gold, 
the entire nest being in the middle of the river, 
surrounded by snakes, scorpions, and "all 
manner of creeping things," and above all by 
a snake that no man could kill — which how- 
ever a man did kill. In this case, as in most 
of those in folk-lore where the soul is sup- 



56 ANIMISM 

posedly unassailable, the conquest is efFedled 
through magic.^ 

In many cases the story has to do with the 
miraculous birth (not always virgin birth, 
however) of twins or triplets, simultaneous 
with which appears some plant or tree or 
other objedl which is the repository of the 
soul or is the ** life-token.'' The fading or 
withering of bloom or plant here indicates 
disaster. Sometimes, instead of the plants, 
weapons (which undergo modernization in 
successive generations of story-tellers) spring 
up, or a spring wells forth, and in them reside 
the souls of the children. Then if hilt falls 
from sword or sheen tarnishes on blade, or if 
lock looses from gun or the clear water of the 
spring begins to run clouded, the event be- 
tokens danger or catastrophe to the possessor 
of the soul.^^ In the Ramayana, Garuda says 
to Rama: "I am thy friend, thy life free- 

^ The story of the Book of Thoth is told in Petrie, Egyptian 
Talesy ii. 89 fF.; Spiegelberg, Demotische Papyrus; and Murray, 
Ancient Egyptian Legends^ pp. 3 1 fF. 

^•^ A number of interesting cases exhibiting these phenomena, 
not usually cited in the books can be found in Parker, Village 
Folk Tales of Ceylon (e.g., i. 164, 166-168, 190, et passim); Day, 
Folk-Tales of Bengal, pp. 2, 6, 85-86, 189, 253, etc.; Indian 
Antiquary, i. 86, 117, xvii. 54; Steel, Tales of the Punjab, pp. 52, 
5S> 75, etc. 



THE EXTERNAL SOUL S7 

ranging, external to thyself." " It may be 
sufficient here, without going further into 
details in this interesting subject, to note that 
a considerable number of folk-tales of this 
and kindred types have been brought together 
and their points of similarity and difference 
discussed in Hartland's fascinating volumes,^^ 
a work which is urged upon all who wish to 
note the salient characteristics of this fertile 
field. It is interesting to remark that a new 
area for the existence of this curious belief 
Has recently been discovered in the far north, 
since it is a part of the mental possessions of 
the Tshimsheans of Alaska.^^ 

If it be objedled that the principal evidence 
for all this is found in the region of Mdrchen, 
of folk-tale, and therefore purely imaginative, 
the reply is: even were this all, it shows a 
mode of thought and possibilities of concep- 
tion, of psychological activity. But above all 
this, we can adduce the fadl that transition to 
adlual belief is furnished by the many cases 
in which a tree is planted when a child is 
born, and the life of tree and child are thought 

" Nivedita, Myths of Hindus, p. 82. 

^2 The Legend of Perseus, 3 vols. 

1^ Ardander, Apostle of Alaska, p. 93. 



58 ANIMISM 

to be intimately connedled. The Maori bury 
the navel cord or the placenta and plant a 
tree over the spot, and the latter becomes 
the life token.^^ Similarly, in Old Calibar the 
burial of the placenta and planting of a tree 
are conjoined.^^ In Pomerania a tree already 
growing is employed. Similar beliefs may be 
cited from Western Africa, Oceanica (e.g., 
Banks Islands ^^), Madagascar, Russia, Ger- 
many, Italy, Switzerland, and England, and 
even in China traces of like customs are 
found.^^ In these cases fate of tree and person 
are so bound together that withering of or 
damage to the tree results in or indicates 
harm to the person. Thus certain Nigerian 
tribes hold that a tree has the life or breath 
of a person in it, and that harm to either may 
mean death to the other.^* 

** Taylor, Te Ika a Maui^ p. 184. 

^^ Burton, Wit and Wisdom from West Africa^ p. 411. 

^^ Rivers, Melanesian Society, i. 155. 

" Cases are colleded in Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 28 ff. 

18 Thomas, Anthropological Report, pp. 29, 31, et passim. 



V 
PARITY OF BEING 



V 
PARITY OF BEING 

^ I "^HIS opens the way to the next branch 
-■- of the subjedl. If the human soul could 
! reside in objects, why should not these objedls 
themselves possess spirits? The evident con- 
vicflion of early and primitive races as to the 
existence, form, and substance of the human 
soul has, it is believed, been adequately 
presented in the foregoing. But is the posses- 
sion of soul limited by these races to humanity? 
Do primitive peoples regard other beings as 
also so endowed? The definition of animism 
already furnished involves an affirmative an- 
swer, but we must look a little further into 
this phase of the subjedl. There is an "epi- 
gram of Christian pantheism" which declares 
that "God sleeps in the stone, dreams in the 
plant, awakens in the animal, and is self- 
conscious in man." ^ This expresses in some 

^ Basil Wilberforce, Steps in Spiritual Growth, d. 50. 
61 



62 ANIMISM 

degree what primitive man thought of things 
about him, except that he would have de- 
murred at the idea of mere sleep or dream of 
the sentient in the world of the non-human. 
He doubtless from the beginning made himself 
the measure of things. And so, as was briefly 
shown at the beginning of this discussion,^ 
any objeA in nature might be conceived by 
primitive or savage as a duality, like himself, 
the body of which was visible and tangible, 
and the soul, like his own, invisible except to 
the soul itself or to the skilled shaman. With 
the untutored, nothing exists in nature but 
may give occasion to this conception of 
possession of soul. Omaha Indians represent 
this by the statement that all forms mark 
where Wakonda has stopped and brought 
them into existence. "Man . . . becomes lit- 
erally a part of nature, connedled with it 
physically and related to it psychically." So 
endowments of animals may be transferred to 
man, and Wakonda helps in answer to prayer 
by sending the animal which has the endow- 
ment proper to the end desired. This explains 
in part the "animal totem," found in almost 
exadlly parallel form among the Tamaniu of 
2 Pp. lo fF., above. 



PARITY OF BEING 63 

the Banks Islands.^ Another statement of the 
fadl is the following: 

"The quality of savage mind which perhaps 
most profoundly illuminates our subjedl is its 
hazy sense of personality, the difficulty it ex- 
periences in marking off its 'self from other 
selves; in other words, the absence of sharp 
dualisms. This is revealed in creation myths, 
in primitive notions of kinship and relation- 
ship, in the almost universal savage belief in 
metamorphosis, in the savage's identification 
of 'self with the name, shadow, dream-self, 
likeness, clothing and other property. . . . And 
the wide-spread belief in 'possession' by good 
or evil spirits further confirms the principle."* 

More advanced peoples may own to a com- 
plete animism. Examples are found in the 
advanced philosophies and religions of India. 
**Only last summer in a conversation with an 
orthodox Brahman in Kashmir I discovered 
that he regarded everything in nature, down 
to separate stick and stone and blade of 

^ A. C. Fletcher and F. La Flesche, in Twenty-seventh Annual 
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnologyy p. 600; Rivers, 
Melanesian Societyy i. 154. 

* Todd, The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, 
pp. 9-10. 



64 ANIMISM 

grass, as possessed by its own spirit." ^ It is 
not wonderful that man should endow with 
life, soul, and power the great objedls of nature, 
the heavenly bodies, for instance. Nor can 
we wonder that such objedls as a volcano with 
its manifestation of mysterious force, a moun- 
tain range which seems to clothe itself in 
clouds and to launch forth the avalanche, the 
sea, with its varied moods and mystery, that 
appals even the modern experienced traveler, 
the river with its ceaseless flow and its occa- 
sional devastations, the forest with its reaches 
of silence or its monotone under the soughing 
of the wind, call up convidlions of dread 
personality. These things alone suffice to 
suggest that primitive man felt himself ever 
in the presence of mystery. Few objecfls 
there were but seemed to possess each its own 
basis for arousing admiration or fear. 

It is necessary here to inquire somewhat 
more minutely into the drift of the thoughts 
of primitive man concerning the things he 
saw or felt or imagined. And in doing this 
we are to recall that three avenues are open 
along which to advance in this inquiry. First 

^ Professor Hervey D. Griswold, in The Biblical Worldt 
Sept. 1912, p. 165. 



PARirr OF BEING 65 

there is the avenue of cult, where definite 
adls of devotion or gift (sacrifice) unfailingly 
indicate belief in the sentient and potent 
capabilities of the objedl addressed. It is 
obvious that even the most naive of savages 
pay no attention of this sort to objedls which 
they conceive to be without the qualities of 
life, sensation, emotion, and power. The 
second avenue is that of folk-lore and myth- 
ology. To some this may appear trivial and 
unworthy of serious attention. Yet these 
are "the sedimentary deposits of the traditions 
of remotely distant epochs." ^ Just as chil- 
dren's games and festivals in May or in 
harvest season recall and are founded on 
pradlices that once obtained in real earnest, 
so folk-tales encyst, like a fly in the amber 
or a fossil in the rock, the indications of Hfe 
in some cases long past. In other instances 
not a few they represent thought that still 
lingers, if we but knew where to look for it. 
Stories of men and women transformed into 
beasts, either voluntarily or involuntarily, 
of cats or hares which prove to be the forms 
witches assume for mischievous ends, seem 
to us fooUsh; the tales of were-wolves, told in 
® Cox, Introduction to Folk-lore, pp. 3-4. 



66 ANIMISM 

earnest even yet in parts of Europe, seem to 
the educated impossible and merely laughable. 
Yet we shall see that the modern African 
believes them, and at times looks askance at 
his neighbor who has the reputation of being 
an ''elephant-man" or a "leopard-man." The 
[ third avenue is that of beliefs still or recently 
current among savages comparatively or com- 
pletely unafFedled by the higher civilizations. 
Even in India, which has so long been in 
contadl with the culture of the West, old 
beliefs linger, often in passive but efFedlive 
resistance to more enlightened ideas, while 
in Africa and among the indigenes of the 
Americas and of Australia and Oceanica native 
forms of thought continue, sometimes but 
little adulterated, as where relationship is 
claimed by a clan or tribe with this or that 
genus of plant or animal life. 



I. INANIMATE OBJECTS IN NATURE 
POSSESS SOUL 

It seems superfluous here to cite cases of 
the belief which has existed so nearly uni- 
versally that the sun, the planets, and the 
stars are living objedls possessed of soul. 



PARITY OF BEING 67 

The stage in which a deity is supposed to 
inhabit or to rule or to have as his special 
sphere of control one of these heavenly objecfls 
registers, of course, an advanced culture, 
when pure animism has given way to a higher 
mode of thought and a truer perception of 
fadls/ But that once these objecfls were 
regarded as sentient is clear from poetry, 
myth, and remainder in folk-lore and song. 
Among Oceanicans the sun is in form like a 
man, but possessed of fearful energy. He 
has many legs, and various other members in 
excess.^ Worthy of special notice in this 
connedlion is the conception of the earth as 
the great mother, a belief that was historical 
in Babylonia, Asia Minor particularly, and in 
Greece, where it influenced in especial manner 
pradlice and ritual. Speaking of the Su- 
merians Langdon says: 

"The nourishing life of earth, warmed by 
the sunshine, refreshed by the rains, furnished 

' On Zeus as an example of this, see Cook's Zeusy p. 3, note 2. 

^ Westervelt, Legends of Maui, pp. 50, 52. For a colledion 
of indications of worship of the sun (itself proof of the way in 
which this luminary was regarded), see the author's article in 
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 
xi. 137-145; for star-worship, ib.y xi. 68-69; ^^d for worship of 
the moon among the Hebrews, ib., vii. 492-494. 



68 ANIMISM 

the prehistoric Sumerians . . . with their first 
god. And this deity who fostered all life 
was conceived of as a mother, unbegotten, 
genderless, producing animal and vegetable 
life as a virgin. But primitive peoples do not 
think in abstradl terms, nor do they produce 
ideas as abstradl principles. They conceived 
the earth goddess under that form of life with 
which they were most familiar. In the case 
of this people the grape vine appears to have 
been the plant which appealed to them as 
most efficiently manifesting the power of the 
great mother. Hence they called this goddess 
* Mother Vine-Stalk,' or simply 'Goddess Vine- 
Stalk.'"^ 

In Nigeria the ground is an objedt which 
underlies many taboos, and to it sacrifices are 
offered of many kinds.^° The feeling among 
the Ibo-speaking peoples seems much like 
that, if not the same, which governed in 
Greece and Asia Minor before the person- 
alizing of the Great Mother.^^ At the other 
extreme the sky is regarded as father, though 
in the Egyptian myth, which speaks of the 

® Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtaty p. 43. 
*° Thomas, Anthropological Reporty i. 11, et passim. 
"■ Cf., for instance, Harrison, Prolegomena, pp. 260-271. 



PARITY OF BEING 69 

separation of earth and heaven (a myth that 
is charadlerized by its diffusion or else is 
indigenous in many regions), curiously enough 
in a way adumbrating the theory of the 
evolutionary origin of the worlds and appear- 
ing in Gen. i, the respedive genders of earth 
and sky are reversed. ^^ 

But such faith is not confined to celestial 
objedls and the earth. Things terrestrial, 
tangible or intangible, had each its own 
spirit and life. Thus, to group a number of 
these, winds, lightning, mountains, and forests 
are sentient beings. Thus of some Africans 
it is said that they hold that: "The wind 
1 talks to the forest and the forest to the wind. 
The tornado is often nothing more than a 
quarrel between mountain and forest, lightning 
and wind [^which latter is a servant of some- 
thing else]; and we ourselves [[the Africans] 
may get hit with the bits.'*^^ Pima Indians 
think of Wind and Storm-cloud (Rain-man) 
as supernatural persons who once did menial 

^ For a descriptive picture of this separation, cf. Brugsch, 
Religion und Mythologie der Aegyptety p. 210, reproduced in 
Homiletic Review, Oct., 1912, p. 275. For a crude form of this 
myth of the separation of heaven and earth, see Westervelt, 
Legends of Maui, pp. 31 fF. 

" Milligan, Fetish Folk of West Africa^ p. 215. 



70 ANIMISM 

service for mortals, while Thunder also pos- 
sesses personality, owns fire, and detedls the 
thief of fire (the essentials of the story of 
Prometheus are here);^^ and the notions of 
the Omahas are quite similar. The Uriankhai 
of Mongolia deify mountains, rivers, and the 
wind.^^ The Zulus regard their rainmakers as 
operating upon clouds as the Greeks thought 
of Zeus the Cloud-gatherer, and to them 
cloud and lightning are still sentient beings, 
alive and full of power, though controlled by 
the medicine men.^^ 

The sea is regarded in the same way. Hart- 
land cites the case of the ancient Celts reported 
by ^lian, supported in substance by native evi- 
dence from Celtic tradition, who used to meet 
the overflowing sea with drawn swords and 
menacing spears, employing the same meth- 
ods as those used towards human enemies.^^ 
Mr. Hartland refers also to the same notion 
as exhibited by the Malays and reported by 
Skeat. It would be easy to adduce testimony 
to this same efFedl from Africa, where the 

" Fewkes, lUh Annual Report of Bureau of Am. Ethnology, 
pp. 43, 47; Fletcher and La Flesche, 22d Report, passim. 
^^ Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 243. 
^^ Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, \. 109. 
" Hartland, Ritual and Belief, pp. 161 fF. 



PARirr OF BEING 71 

natives of the West shore offer sacrifice to 
the sea in order to induce it to grant an easy 
landing. In folk-lore this idea is transformed 
later in culture-history into the kelpies and 
what-not that inhabit the waters; but students 
of folk tales have no doubt that in the original 
form the sea was regarded as possessing full 
personality with all that is involved. 

It seems superfluous almost to cite cases of 
rivers which have personality, since classic 
stories abound which bear out the claim. Yet 
it is useful to show that such ideas are not 
confined to the literature of Greece.^^ For 
instance, a traveler who was being conveyed 
by canoe and paddle up a river was persuaded 
by the Africans to turn back because a cloud 
appeared over the stream, and they supposed 
that it was caused by the river in displeasure 
at the profanation of its waters by a stranger. 
In other cases the river is simply possessed by 
a spirit, to which oflFerings should be made in 

" For citations of rivers regarded as divinities by Greeks the 
reader may consult Halliday, Greek Divination, pp. 116-117. 
He will find there that springs also come under the same category. 
Thus the spring at Kolophon rendered inspired the priest who 
drank it (Tacitus, Annals, ii. 54; Pliny, ii. 103, 232). One 
recalls inevitably the many sacred springs throughout the world, 
the sandity being but the attenuated form in which the old 
belief has come down to us. 



72 ANIMISM 

order that no calamity may be suffered in the 
crossing.^^ The survival in poetry of the 
thought of a river as a person may be illus- 
trated from the Ramayana, where a river 
becomes the wife of a king (xv. 20: 13), or 
falls in love and bears a son (xiii. 2: 18). 
The Ganges is a daughter and a goddess, 
becomes a spouse and bears a son. In the 
days of wife-capture, primitives would see in 
a torrent into which a maiden had fallen a 
male capturing his wife; or, in case of a man 
falling in, they might think of a fierce female 
seizing a husband. It will be recalled that 
the Egyptians thought of the Nile as a short 
ugly male with huge woman's breasts, sym- 
bolizing the fertility which the river brought 
to the land. In New Guinea the rivers are 
besought as persons to make gifts of fish to 
the Mafulu.2o In MongoUa they are deified.^^* 
The views of fire as a person, having attri- 
butes that correspond, might be easily 
supported by reference to the Vedic and 
Brahmanic teaching respedling Agni, whose 
name reappears in the Latin as ignis^ fire. 

" Roscoe, Baganddy pp. 318-319. 

^^ Williamson, South Sea Savage^ p. 231. 

2°* Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 243. 



PARirr OF BEING 73 

The Kai of German New Guinea assert de- 
liberately that fire has soul.^^ One might with 
profit investigate the background of the Zoro- 
astrian notion of the extreme sandlity of 
fire, and the Aryo-Indian conceptions already 
noted would be found lurking therein. Simi- 
larly Malabars hold that a flame has life and 
spirit, and fear the ghost of a flame that has 
suddenly been quenched.^^ 

The evidence of belief in the life and power, 
even of the divinity, of rocks and stones is 
too abundant to be cited at any length. In 
the Semitic sphere William Robertson Smith 
has offered irrefutable evidence of worship of 
such objedls — worship, it will be seen at 
once, being evidence of belief in possession of 
attributes equivalent to soul and spirit by 
the objedl of devotion.^^ It is among the 
curiosities of history that the stones of Carnac 
in France and of Rollright in England are 
said to leave their positions and to go down 
to the sea, or to a spring to drink.^^ Africans 
report that a large stone near a village patrols 

2* Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 143-144. 
^ Folk-lore, v. 297 ff. 

2^ Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, and Religion of the 
Semites. 

24 Folk-lore, v. 297 flf. 



74 ANIMISM 

the outskirts of that village during danger.^^ 
A great rock in the African region inhabited 
by the Baganda is deemed sacred and is an 
objedl of worship and propitiation, and the 
same is true of a meteorite. ^^ The stone of 
Nimm, an Etoi goddess, is now an altar, and 
this is doubtless but a development from the 
conception of it as endowed with life, as 
might be abundantly illustrated from other 
sources.^^ In Mongolia stones are among the 
objedls of worship.^^ In Melanesia stones and 
rocks of many sorts receive oflFerings, and are 
regarded either as the homes of spirits or as 
being the possessors of these — the two are 
not so far apart; also in the Solomon Islands 
spirit is associated with stone. In the New 
Hebrides large rocks are especially sacred. 
Banks Islanders regard certain long stones 
as so much alive that they can draw out a 
man's soul if his shadow fall on them. In 
Florida Island any peculiarly shaped stone 
may have Hfe and soul attributed to it.^^ 

26 D'Alviella, Hibbert Le^ureSy p. 54. 

28 Roscoe, The Baganddy pp. 271-272, 290. 

2' Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 171-172. 
^ Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 56 ff. 

29 Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 119, 140, 143, 169, <r/ passim} 
Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 178. 



PARITY OF BEING 75 

In many cases of this sort the attitude toward 
them seems to imply in them a kind of sandity, 
which is however but a more developed way of 
thinking and is evidential of an earlier and 
cruder mode of thought. A survival of this 
charadler is in evidence near Laguna, New 
Mexico, where seven jagged rocks are the 
prisons of seven spirits.^° The stone of the 
Omaha sweat lodge was regarded anthropo- 
pathically.^^ The case of the Baganda meteor- 
ite cited above is but one of many instances 
of the kind in which veneration has been paid. 
The two stones of the Kaaba at once occur to 
the mind.^^ Adls 19: 35 furnishes a notable 
instance. One may recall the very numerous 
cases from ancient Greece — the sacred stone 
at Delphi, that at Hyettos, the thirty wor- 
shipped by the Pharaeans, the many Hermae 
along the Greek roads referred to so often by 
the classical writers.^^ These were worshipped 
and anointed with oil — compare the treat- 
ment accorded Jacob's pillar (above, p. 5). 

^ Quoted by Wallis in JRPy July 191 2, from Southern Work- 
many Nov. 1910. 

31 Fletcher and La Flesche, lyth ReporU etc., pp. 575-578. 

32 JV^a; Schaff'Herzog Encyclopedia^ vi. 289. 

^ Theophrastus, Charaderes ethicit xvi.; Pausanias, ed. 
Frazer, VIII. xxxiv. 3; X. xxiv. 6, etc. 



76 ANIMISM 

At Aneiteum in Melanesia stones thought to 
resemble objedls of desire or striving received 
worship from various classes of people. Thus 
one that was fish-shaped was venerated by 
fishermen.^* 

To catalogue here the various objedls in 
nature which have had life attributed to them 
would require much space. Mention will be 
made of only the following in addition to those 
already adduced. The rainbow is a thing 
of life in Australia, inhabiting deep water- 
holes in the mountains; it is seen only when it 
is passing from one of these to another. 
Approximately the same notion obtains in 
Africa.^^ Among the Baganda of Africa, rain- 
water is a totem (i.e., it is either an ancestor 
or an ally).^^ By Arabs the resin or gum from 
which the frankincense of commerce is derived 
is regarded as the blood of a tree, the soul of 
which is a divinity, and the gathering of the 
gum is attended by special ceremonies.^^ The 
Tshemsheans of Alaska find their devotional 
spirit awakened, as in the presence of a 

^ Turner, SamoUy p. 327. 

25 Mathew, Eagle-hawk and Crowy p. 146; Missions Catholiques, 
no. 239, p. 592. 

2^ Roscoe, The Baganda^ p. 140. 

'^ Zehnpfund, in New Schaff-Herzog Encydopediat iv. 372. 



PARITY OF BEING 77 

supernatural being, by precipices, tidal waves, 
or indeed almost any objed or phenomenon 
that is strange to them.^^ 



2. SOUL IN THINGS ARTIFICIAL 

A rather noted controversy over theories of 
language, and incidentally of myth and reli- 
gion, once took place between Professors Max 
Miiller and Whitney, in which, a little after 
the event, the late Andrew Lang took a hand. 
The Oxford scholar saw in myth "a disease of 
language," and Mr. Lang replied that what 
the data showed was a disease of thought. 
By this Mr. Lang intended to convey the idea 
that man was astray either in his observations 
or in the dedudlions he made from them. 
How far astray from the truth man often was 
we have already seen. But notions even 
more strange are yet to be cited. One of the 
earliest literary testimonies to the class of 
ideas to be noted in this sedlion is found in 
one of the minor prophets, who declares: 

"They (men) sacrifice unto their net, and 
burn incense unto their drags; because by 
them their portion is fat, and their meat 

^ Ardander, Apostle of Alaska, pp. lOO ff. 



78 ANIMISM 

plenteous. ^^ " Here we have a fadl stated, as 
well as the reason for the fad which can be 
duplicated from many diflFerent quarters evei;i 
in our own day. Objedls which were the 
produdl of man's own handicraft, the genesis 
of which and whole produdlion and mode of 
use he knew, received his homage. Hunting 
implements and those used in agriculture are 
by man endowed with life and power before 
which he bows in reverence. In India there 
is a festival lasting three days, observed in 
Odlober by Hindoos of all castes, including 
the Brahmins, which has to do with the 
worship of all sorts of tools and implements. 
In many cases it is doubtless but the survival 
of a custom; in very many others, however, 
the original element of ascription of life or 
divinity still inheres.'*^ It is not so very 
difficult to see the reason for the primitive 
mind's being afFedled in this way. Why should 
the mere scratching of the earth with a rude 
hoe and the deposition of a seed produce so 
bountiful and, to it, strange results? What 
did early man know of the chemistry of 
nature? Was it not the spirit in the hoe 

39 Habakkuki: i6. 

** Cf. Thurston, Omens and Superstitions, pp. 174-175. 



PARITY OF BEING 79 

that made the gift of the harvest? If we 
were to study fetishism, we should discover 
that man beheves that he can bring together 
**odds and ends" in a bundle or bag, and that 
a spirit will take up its abode there. Why 
should not with easy plausibility the hoe or 
net or drag equally be or become animate? 
It is perhaps not at all wonderful that in 
India particularly, perhaps elsewhere, the 
fire-drill was an objedl of devotion and con- 
ceived to be divine. When we recall the 
fadl, now so familiar to us, but remaining to 
the Hindoos for millenniums one of the 
arcana of nature, viz., that from a place where 
apparently there was no fire, fire may be 
evoked, literally called into being, we can 
begin to appreciate in some small degree 
man's awe before such phenomena. We can 
find the same awe existing in Fiji, where, 
besides stones, houses, and canoes, tools of 
various sorts are credited with souls and 
believed to be immortal.^^ In the same region 
so isolated and insignificant a thing as a 
whale's tooth is credited with life and immor- 
tality; so the Fijian ghost in the spirit land 
on occasion throws at a pandanus tree the 

^ Williams, Fijiy i. 241. 



8o ANIMISM 

ghost of the whale's tooth that was buried 
with his body.^2 

Not less curious than the foregoing is the 
fadl that food and the like have been and 
still are regarded as animate and possessed of 
spirit. The ancient Egyptians provided for 
the ka, soul or double of the deceased, articles 
of food, drink, or clothing, so that it need 
not suffer hunger, thirst, or cold. But the 
ka, being ethereal, did not use the things 
themselves, but only the parts of them that 
stood in the same relation to the things as 
the ka did to the deceased, i.e., their souls or 
doubles. So that there a conception won- 
drously like that of spirit or soul is attributed 
to articles of food, drink, and clothing. In 
the earlier stages of Egyptian civilization, the 
things devoted to the deceased were purposely 
mutilated; and it requires no stretch of the 
imagination, had we no contemporaneous 
testimony to the fadl, to see in this mutilation 
of the offerings the same process as we are 
famiHar with in another connection, viz., the 
killing of the offerings.^^ Just as slaves and 
wives were sent through the gates of death 

*2 Williams, Fiji, i. 243 ff. 

*3 Ancient Egypt, ii (1914), 123. 



PARirr OF BEING 8i 

to serve their dead lord, so were implements, 
weapons, ornaments and food. In Nigeria 
around funeral shrines are fragments of house- 
hold belongings, which have been broken so 
that their astral forms may be set free to be 
carried by the owner's shade to its spirit 
home.^^ In perfedl agreement with this trend 
of thought, the Dyaks of Borneo bury with 
the body various utensils, and hold that 
these have spirits which the deceased takes 
along with him to his new home and puts to 
good use.^^ In Central Africa baskets, hoe- 
handles, pots that have been perforated, 
broken cups and the Hke are placed at graves, 
having been killed by breaking that their 
spirits may go to the spirit land there to do 
service.^^ In like fashion the Bakongos endow 
bottles, cloths, umbrellas and similar articles 
with spirit. ^^ Talbot learned in Africa that to 
a cloth can be imparted personal qualities, so 
that it breaks out into speech.^^ Even orna- 
ments may have soul, according to the Melane- 

** Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurredion, ii. 1 19-120; 
Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 6 fF. 
*^ Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo^ pp. 138, 142. 
^ Werner, Native Races, pp. 155, 159. 
*7 Weeks, Primitive Bakongo, pp. 269, 272. 
* Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy p. 226. 



82 ANIMISM 

sians of New Guinea, and their souls, evapo- 
rated by fire, are offered to disease demons 
which have operated by extradting a human 
soul from its abode.^^ The Kai of German 
New Guinea offer food and viands to the 
ghosts of their dead, which considerately eat 
only the soul thereof and leave the substance 
to those who offer it.^° It would seem from 
certain passages in the Old Testament that 
the conception once existed that even a part 
of the body might have individual life and 
power. Witness the expression, "El (God) 
of my hand" (Gen. 31:29; Deut. 28:32; 
Micah 2:1; Prov. 3:27; Neh. 5:5).^^ Even 
so abstradl a conception as the year receives 
homage as a personality among the Ibo- 
speaking peoples, who, by the way, place 
rivers among the great powers which they 
name Alose.^^ 

*' Seligmann, Melanesiansy pp. 189 fF. 
^ Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guineay iii. 145 fF., 489 fF., 513 fF. 
[" B. D. Eerdmans, in Expositor y Nov. 191 3, p. 386. 
^ Thomas, Anthropological Report^ pp. 27 ff. 



PARITY OF BEING 83 

3. SOUL OR SPIRIT IN THE VEGETABLE 
WORLD 

If things so obviously inanimate as those 
we have just noticed could be regarded as 
possessing the attributes of life and soul, it is 
no wonder that the vegetable world was 
thought to exhibit the same qualities. The 
plant has the power of producing pregnancy 
in the human species, since leaf and flower 
from certain specified kinds of plants, falling 
on a woman, get her with child. ^^ In Melanesia 
the Cycas and the Casuarina are sacred, and 
in folk-lore the Cycas becomes a maiden. 
Children also are believed to have sprung 
from trees, fruits, and other vegetable growths.^^ 
In Australia the cones of the Casuarina are 
supposed to have eidola which, when released 
by burning, attack the eyes of bystanders 
and cause bHndness — in all probability the 
stinging charadler of the smoke is thus ex- 
plained.^^ Trees have souls, feel pain, and 
even hold conversation, and this is not con- 

^2 Roscoe, The Baganduy p. 48. 

" Codrington, Melanesiansy p. 187; cf. Talbot, In the Shadow 
of the Bushy pp. 133-135. 

" Howitt, Native Tribes of South-east Australia, pp. 363, 
366, 376-377> 453- 



84 ANIMISM 

fined to the larger growths, being extended 
to plants or shrubs, and some skilled humans 
have had the knowledge of plant language.^® 
The fertilization of trees may be regarded as 
the result of desire and voluntative adlion. 
Malays believe implicitly in the souls of trees 
and consider it appropriate to make offerings 
to them.^^ The tree as oracle in Ancient 
Greece and elsewhere is a well known fadl — 
cf. the sacred oak at Dodona, whose character 
is standing evidence of belief in its divinity, 
and this in ancient times included the idea of 
intelligent life and soul. One might produce 
abundance of evidence of ascription of these 
possessions to plants from the phenomena of 
totemism, the idea here being either descent 
from or alliance with some particular species 
of plant, treatment of which was always 
respedlful and like that accorded to members 
of the human tribe or clan. Thus, to cite but 
a single instance out of the many available, 
such plants as the bean, mushroom, and yam 

^^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 30-36, 177-178, 181, 
287, 299-300; D'Alviella, Hibbert Leduresy pp. 53 fF. In the tale 
of Anpu and Bata (Petrle, Egyptian Tales, 2d series, pp. 48 fF.) 
the tree has power of speech. 

" Skeat, Malay Magicy pp. 194; Homiletic Review, July, 1912, 
pp. 14-15; Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 441. 



PARITY OF BEING 85 

occur as totems among the Baganda.^^ Among 
the Ibo-speaking peoples trees known as 
Ojuku and Ngu belong to the powers known 
as Alose, and so akin to man are certain trees 
that in the process of reincarnation their 
souls may animate human bodies.^^ The wor- 
ship of the tree has received attention so 
frequent and elaborate as here not to call for 
extended treatment. From the British Isles 
across Europe and Asia evidence of this cult 
is abundant, and has been increased in the 
excavations which have brought to light the 
ancient Mycenaean and Mediterranean civili- 
zations. How widespread this worship has 
been in India may be seen from the sculpture 
still in existence, some of which has been 
illustrated and studied by Fergusson.^^ 

Among the Mafulu of New Guinea the yam 
is regarded as having personality, and possess- 
ing a sweetheart plant.^^ One of the most 
remarkable testimonies to the feeling of primi- 
tive man in reference to the forest is the 
following from Lange; speaking of an Indian 
alone in the bush: 

^ J. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 138-140. 
^ N. W. Thomas, Anthropological Report, i. 27, 28, 3 1, et passim. 
^ Tree and Serpent Worship; cf. Homiletic Review y July, 19 12. 
*^ Williamson, South Sea Savage y pp. 233 flF. 



86 ANIMISM 

"It appears to the Indian that he is beside 
himself; he feels strange exterior influences 
of an almost overwhelming characfler, foreign 
to men who are only used to a civilized life 
and whose path is far away from the wilder- 
ness. It appears to him now that an invisible 
and almost irresistible force is trying to at- 
tradl him, and to lead him deeper and deeper 
into the forest, perhaps there to perish. He 
feels the sense of fear; he argues with him- 
self: 'The forest wants to destroy me, to kill 
me, to absorb me.' After he returns to his 
hut, he says: *I was hunting, the forest 
wanted to kill me, and got me almost into its 

power, but I escaped and I have returned 
safely.'" «2 



4. SOUL OR SPIRIT IN ANIMALS 

If the principle of "parity of being" involves 
the conception of life and soul in inanimate 
objedls and in the plant world, a fortiori we 
should expedl that animals would be endowed, 
in the mind of primitives, with the same 
qualities. Here again no exhaustive examina- 
tion and colledlion of cases can be presented, 

^2 Lange, The Lower Amazon, p. 424. 



PARITY OF BEING 87 

so extensive is the evidence. What will be 
offered will show simply the range of the idea 
and the completeness with which it is carried 
out. 

"In all African fables the various animals 
are but thinly disguised human beings." ^^ 
Even the lower forms of animal life, such as 
the starfish, indeed totally mythical examples 
of this species, have been regarded as possessed 
of or as being spirit. Thus in the Murray 
River region of Australia a huge starfish is 
supposed to be a spirit and to inhabit a deep 
water hole.^^ Animals like lions, leopards, 
crocodiles, sheep, reptiles, and others have 
ghosts that are dangerous after death and 
must be placated or guarded against.^^ Ainus 
treat as a god a captive bear, and when it is 
killed for food, some of its own flesh is offered 
to it as a sacrifice. ^^ Many other peoples in 
different quarters of the world — American 
Indians, Malays, and so on — treat with 
pretended or real honor the game animal 
they slay, or attempt to cajole it or deceive it, 

»2 Milligan, Fetish Folk of West Africuy p. 215. 

" Taplin, Narrinyeri, p. 138. 

^ Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 288-289. 

^ Batchelor, Ainus and their Folk-lorey pp. 486-496. 



88 ANIMISM 

just as they would attempt to cajole or deceive 
one of their own species if success seemed 
likely, in order that its spirit or its blood kin 
may not avenge its slaughter. Malays will 
cry out to a tiger which they have trapped 
that "Mohammed set the trap," so as to 
send its spirit on a false scent when it starts 
out for revenge.^^ Among the Dyaks the 
crocodile when caught "is addressed in eulo- 
gistic language and beguiled, so the people 
say, into offering no resistance. He is called 
a rajah among animals, and is told that he has 
come on a friendly visit and must behave 
accordingly. . . . Though the animal is spoken 
to in such flattering terms before he is secured, 
the moment ... he is powerless for evil, 
they deride him for his stupidity.'' ^^ Their 
treatment of bears and tigers is quite similar. 
Few fadls could more emphatically demon- 
strate the complete parity of animals with 
man, as conceived by various races, than the 
remarkable one that animals have been 
credited with organization into kinships, 
families, societies, and governments, and 

" Skeat, Malay Magicy p. 167; cf. Charlevoix, Journal d'un 
voyage dans VAmerique septentrionale, v. 173. 
•* Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, pp. 59-60. 



PARITY OF BEING 89 

that they are held to perform even worship.^^ 
The extreme example of what Andrew Lang 
called "disease of thought" in this diredlion 
has already been noted, in the cases where 
man regards himself indifferently as a casso- 
wary or some other totem gens, or on the other 
hand considers the animal species as the same 
as himselfJ^ This curious operation of the 
mind may be further illustrated by two other 
examples. The islanders of Mabuiag say of 
the cassowary that "he all same as relation, 
he belong same family," and Alaskans took 
the first Russians whom they saw for cuttle 
fish because of the buttons on their clothesJ^ 
It is, after this, no subjedl for wonder if a 
Zuni Indian see in a turtle or rabbit or hedge- 
hog the embodiment of one of his ancestors, 
or that a totem clan can trace origins back 
to planet or sun, to bird, beast, or reptileJ^ 
The complete parity of different states of 
existence is here in evidence; and implicit 

*' Illustrations of monkeys performing the ads of worship 
are abundantly found in the sculptures of India; cf. worship of 
the sacred tree in Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship, and 
Homiletic Review, July, 191 2. 

'0 See p. 8. 

'1 Frazer, Golden Bough \ ii. 388 ff. 

^* F. Gushing, in Century Magazine, May, 1883; and Zuni 
Tales, passim. 



90 ANIMISM 

always, explicit most of the time, is the idea 
of possession of spirit or soul, though the 
conception is necessarily vague. 

Further testimony is furnished by the 
peoples who hold that animals, birds, and the 
like understand human speech, have languages 
of their own, talk, perform the operations of 
reason, engage in trade, are subjedl to passions, 
yield to coaxing, blandishment or deception, 
play tricks on each other and on humans, 
scheme for each other's hurt or death, and 
perform many humanlike actionsJ^ The Mel- 
anesians attribute to the snake the power of 
articulate speech; and the dog is equally well 
endowed, if we may listen to the Blacks of 
AustraliaJ^ Africans of the Niger region are 
not alone in giving speech and reason to the 
parrot, and they know that a hawk takes a 
tree as a wifeJ^ These cases are curiously 
duplicated among the Pima Indians, where 
the dog used to have the power to speak, and 

'3 Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 467-483; cf. the collection of cases 
in Frazer, Taboo, ii. 169-273, 398-404, of incidents showing 
treatment of animals as though possessed of the sentimentalities, 
etc., of human beings; note the speech of cattle, etc., in the 
"Tale of Anpu and Bata," Petrie, Egyptian Tales, ii. 48 fF. 

^* Codrington, Melanesians, p. 151; Fison and Howitt, Kam- 
ilaroi and Kurnai, p. 218. 

'6 Talbot, In the Shadow oj the Bush^ pp. 252, 253, 299-300. 



PARITY OF BEING 91 

an eagle took the form of an old woman and 
seized and carried ofF a girl as a wife. A 
legendary personage also becomes a snake, 
and another named Tonto drinks "medicine" 
and becomes an eagleJ^ The folk-lore of 
India is rich in this sort of tale. Animals, 
led by the crafty jackal (which takes the place 
of the fox in the Occident), not only talk and 
lay deep plots, but ad in all ways Hke humans. 
And the same is true of the feathered tribes. 
It is of course not strange that the parrot 
should talk, but other birds are as well en- 
dowed, so the report goes, and, besides, know 
how to cure diseases. Wild elephants are 
worshipped by the Kadirs of India. The 
dogs, pigs, and other domestic animals of the 
dead at Tubetube, British New Guiana, have 
spirits which find their owners in the spirit 
land.^ 

A reader who knew nothing of the inter- 
pretation of the serpent in Gen. 3 which has 
been current in Jewish and Christian circles 

'® Fewkes, 2%th Report, etc., pp. 44, 45, 48, 52. 

" Cf. Day, Folk-Tales of Bengal, p. 134; Steel and Temple, 
Wide-awake Stories, pp. 6&-67; Thurston, Omens and Super- 
stitions, p. 83; Parker, Village Folk Tales of Ceylon, pp. 113 fF. 
112 S., 209 fF., 213 ff., et passim; Brown, Melanesians and Poly- 
nesians, pp. 443 fF.; Williamson, South Sea Savages, p. 65. 



92 ANIMISM 

would see in that deceiver an animal cast in 
the form of primitive behef, endowed with 
cunning and with power of speech — an 
animal, and nothing more. The reading which 
makes of it a form assumed by the devil for 
purposes of guile belongs to a much later age 
than the story itself. In many lands one may 
find stories parallel to this one regarded as an 
animistic "left-over." The early Egyptians 
could tell of a serpent tribe that had reason, 
speech, organized society, government, and 
manners that some modern nations might 
copy to their own credit and the comfort of 
their neighbours. They had stories that dealt 
with walking and winged serpents, such as 
Eve's beast apparently was before the curse. 
And in our own day the Ekoi of West Africa 
know of reptiles that once had hands and 
feet and led a family Hfe.^^ In Melanesia the 
snake is (or is associated with) spirit.^^ On 
the worship of the serpent much has been 
colledled, and more is continually coming to 
light.^^ The complete parity of this animal 

" Petrle, Egyptian Talesy i. 8i flp.; Talbot, In the Shadow of the 
Bush, pp. 374-377. 

'' Codrington, Melanesians, p. 189. 

^ Cf. the article "Serpent" etc. in The New Schaff-Herzog 
Encyclopedia, x. 363-370; Schlegel, Schltissel zur Ewe-Sprache, 



PARITY OF BEING 93 

with man in these respedls is illustrated farther 
by the fadl that the snake may wed with 
mortals.^^ 



p. 14; Milligan, Fetish Folk of West Africdy pp. 233-234; and 
the two notable volumes of Miss Harrison, Prolegomena^ and 
Themisy where the dominance of the serpent idea and its con- 
tinuance are none the less markedly exhibited in that this par- 
ticular phase is not at all the main thesis of her works, and is 
therefore incidental and the more striking. 
8^ Thurston, Omens and Superstitions ^ p. 91 



VI 
BELIEF IN "FREE SPIRITS 



VI 

BELIEF IN "FREE SPIRITS" 

TT is not to be supposed that life, soul, 
^ spirit, possessing emotional, volitional, and 
fadlual potency, was limited in savage man's 
conception to the tangible and visible. If the 
soul of man was itself invisible, and if soul 
were a possession of plants, animals, and 
other natural objedls, yet perceived only by 
its operations, why should there not be other 
souls "loose in the universe," unseen and 
unfelt except as they revealed themselves by 
their acflivities or manifestations to the world 
of sense? So man seems to have reasoned, 
and this belief abides today in the minds of 
the mass of mankind, even in Christendom. 
Spirits, unfixed so to speak, having form and 
substance, indeed, but not body, roamed free 
and unfettered in air, on land, in the waters. 
They lurked in nook and cranny, behind bush 
and tree and rock; they came in storm and 
wind; they inhabited the woods, floated in 
the atmosphere, swam in the sea and in lake 

97 



98 ANIMISM 

and stream, parched in the desert, hid in cave 
or roamed on mountain top. Wherever mys- 
tery is possible, there man imagines non-human 
spirits to exist. A suggestion of the enormity 
of the numbers of spirits whose existence is 
conceived is given by the following from the 
strongly animistic Shinto faith of Japan in 
comparatively modern times. 

"Reverently adoring the great god of the 
two palaces of Ise (the sun-goddess) in the 
first place, the 800 myriads of celestial kami, 
the 800 myriads of ancestral kanli, all the 
1,500 myriads to whom are consecrated the 
great and small temples in all provinces, all 
islands and all places in the great land of 
eight islands, the 1,500 myriads of kami 
whom they cause to serve them. ... I pray 
with awe that they will deign to corred: the 
unwitting faults which, heard and seen by 
them, I have committed, and, blessing and 
favouring me according to the powers which 
they severally wield, cause me to follow the 
divine example, and to perform good works 
in the way." ^ 

Examples at almost any length might be 

* Quoted by Carpenter, Comparative Religion^ p. 93, from a 
morning prayer by Hirata, a Japanese (1776- 1843). 



BELIEF IN ''FREE SPIRITS" 99 

cited from modern works of contemporaries. 
Only a few instances will be given here simply 
to illustrate the principle. Central Aus- 
tralians believe in the existence of Wullunqua, 
a dread spirit which inhabits a deep water 
hole.2 And other tribes of that continent 
have similar traditions, such as the Narrinyeri, 
who know of a like spirit, the Mulgewauke.* 
By the inhabitants of New Guinea spirits, 
non-human, are supposed to inhabit any place 
with unusual physical characfleristics — water- 
fall, pool, queer-shaped rock, or the like.* 
Of the Guiana native Im Thurn says: 

"His whole world swarms with beings. He 
is surrounded by a host of them, possibly 
harmful. It is therefore not wonderful that 
the Indian fears to be without his fellow, 
fears even to move beyond the light of his 
camp-fire, and when obliged to do so, carries 
a fire-brand with him, that he may have a 
chance of seeing the beings among whom he 
moves.** ^ 

Truly the angelology and demonology of 
advanced faiths have a long ancestry. 

' Spencer and GlUen, Native Tribes^ etc., passim. 
' Taplin, Narrinyeriy pp. 48, 91. 

* Williamson, Ways of South Sea Savage, p. 283. 

* Among the Indians of Guiana. 



loo ANIMISM 

As already suggested, the groundwork for 
I such a faith was already laid in the observa- 
1 tions and deductions regarding man's soul. 
If in sleep his spirit could go forth unseen by 
companions who were near, in order that it 
might perform the deeds of the dreani state 
so real to the savage; if it were true that a 
faint were caused by the temporary desertion 
of its home by the soul; if at death it could 
depart without detection by those intent in 
their watch over the ailing, and reveal its 
invisibility by going forth unseen to a dis- 
embodied existence, why should there not be 
numerous other spirits — either temporarily 
or permanently and by nature bodiless — 
abroad in the universe ? This would be normal 
reasoning, and was ad:ual. The belief is so 
well known, evidences of it are so easily 
accessible, that diredl demonstration here is 
hardly obHgatory. As a matter of fadl, in 
parts of our discussion yet to come, the proof 
will appear incidentally, so that to give it 
here would be but to duplicate what is both 
implicit and explicit in testimony on another 
but related line of investigation. 

In a recent paragraph the words "angel- 
ology" and "demonology" were employed, 



BELIEF IN ''FREE SPIRITS'' loi 

and in their use there is implicit a fundamental 
philosophy which has swayed the conceptions, 
awakened the hopes and aroused the fears, 
helped to form the cults, and controlled the 
adlions of men in all ages and climes for 
which direcfl testimony is adducible. The 
dualism of substance, body and spirit, inherent 
in the notions of animism is paralleled by a 
coincident dualism of charadler. There were 
good spirits and bad, white spirits and black. 
And this charadler was determined by their 
supposed favor or disfavor toward man. 
There were also good spirits which by reason 
of their emotional natures were capable of 
showing inimical traits, while the bad might 
be pacified, rendered innocuous or even 
friendly, by the appropriate treatment. 

This is, of course, but the refledlion of men's 
interpretation of their own nature and ex- 
periences, the result of their reasoning about 
that nature and those experiences. Some- 
times enterprises went awry without any 
cause to them discoverable; again, good 
fortune attended their ventures, and this in 
spite of what seemed to them legitimate fears 
and untoward beginnings. But on the hypo- 
thesis of hosts of invisible beings all about 



102 ANIMISM 

them, good or ill fortune was fully accounted 
for by the diredtion or interference of these 
spirits in man's favor or against him. To 
any event or happening otherwise unaccount- 
able a cause was assigned in the adlion of 
spirits which worked when, where, and how 
they pleased. And as the human being was 
amenable to gift or praise or request, so 
would the spirits yield to similar courses of 
treatment. As he was vexed or angered by 
opposition to his will or by adlual harm, so, 
he reasoned, the spirits could be enraged by 
human doings contrary to their desires. Once 
more, just as he might, when angered, be 
placated by use of the proper means, so would 
the spirits be soothed and rendered benign 
were they properly approached. As he suc- 
cumbed or gave way before force greater than 
his own or was overcome by craft and cunning, 
the spirits too must yield {{force majeure could 
be brought to bear on them or if they could 
be outwitted. 



VII 

FREE SPIRITS"— THEIR CONSTI- 
TUTION AND ACTIVITIES 



VII 

"FREE SPIRITS" — THEIR CONSTI- 
TUTION AND ACTIVITIES 

' I ^HE existence and great numbers of 
■^ spirits which are, so to speak, "free** in 
the universe have just been shown and dis- 
cussed.^ We have noted, too, how readily 
enters here all that we are accustomed to call 
j miraculous. Only we have constantly to 
remember that what we call by that name is 
to primitive people in full accordance with 
nature as they understand it. The very 
conception of miracle implies arrival at the 
thought of a certain uniformity of nature, 
invariability of cause and efFedl outside of 
which the unexpedled may happen — and 
does. It now remains to consider the con- 
stitution and activities of the "free'* spirits 
referred to above. A poetical description, 
having its origin in Babylonia, may here be 
quoted and serve as a starting point. 

' Above, pp. 97 ff. 
los 



io6 ANIMISM 

Great storms sent from heaven, are they, 

The owl that hoots in the city, are they, 

Of Ann's creation,'^ children horn of earth, are 

they, 
The highest walls, the broadest walls, like a flood, 

they pass. 
From house to house they break through. 
No door can shut them out, 
No bolt can turn them back. 
Through the door like a snake, they glide. 
Through the hinge like a wind, they blow.^^ 

Indeed their substance is even more subtle 
than this account indicates. They can invade 
a body already possessed by its own spirit 
and dominate that body for good or evil, or 
even drive out the native spirit and auto- 
cratically rule the captured body. The cap- 
ture may be temporary or permanent. The 
words "demoniac" in English, evOcos and 
vvij46\yiirTo%^ in Greek, express the two facfls 
of "possession'* for evil or for good. Simi- 

2 Assyr. lit. "outpouring," i.e., oi semen. 

2* From cuneiform tablet V, lines 18-35, i" the Utukki Limnuti 
series {Cuneiform Texts XVI. plate 2); translation kindly fur- 
nished by the Rev. Professor Robert W. Rogers, D.D., LL.D., of 
Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, N. J. 

^ Plato, Phadrusy 238, 241. 



''FREE SPIRITS" 107 

larly the word ** ecstasy" (Greek e/co-rao-ts)^ 
sets forth the belief in the temporary departure 
from the body of its own spirit, sometimes for 
communion apart from the body with other 
spirits; and another Greek word, evdvaLaanos, 
denotes the entrance into the human organism 
of a superhuman spirit and the consequent 
elevation of feeling and surge of emotion. 
Though the examples thus far cited register 
the conceptions of peoples advanced in culture, 
like Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians, they 
are not the possession exclusively of such; 
indeed they are survivals from a cruder age. 
Primitive peoples low in the scale of culture 
entertain them. Such folk think of the spirits 
as pervasive and subtle, to whom no doors 
are closed; as entering with equal facility 
portals barred with the grosser materials — 
wood, iron, or stone — or with the living 
flesh.^ 

While thus in a manner insubstantial and 
ethereal in constitution, like discarnated hu- 
man spirits, they have needs, wants, and 
preferences to which the material may minister. 
If the gods in the Babylonian epic of the 

* New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia^ iv. 71-72. 
^ Murray, Ancient Egyptian Legends, pp. 11 fF. 



io8 ANIMISM 

deluge could smell the savor of the post- 
diluvian offering and "hover like flies over 
the sacrifice/' ® not less susceptible to appeals 
offered by material substance are the spirits 
now under consideration. They have the 
enjoyments and repulsions of the senses — 
smell, taste, even grosser physical passions,^ 
and so are propitiable or susceptible of anger. 
While free to roam, they have chosen homes 
and haunts all their own,^ though they may 
become localized in objedls of nature, as in 
India,^ where so often a stone is the seat of 
deity, and among the Fang and Mpongwe, 
so that it seems as if nature is lawless and 
hostile.^^ 

As for disposition, since primitive man 
\ measures all things by himself, only intensify- 
1 ing the idea of power — through the use of 
i his imagination, where the element of mystery 
I enters — it would be expedled that spirits 
I would be good, evil, or neutral except when 



^ Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels, p. 98. 

^ Frazer, Scapegoat, pp. 112-113; Gen. 6: 1-4; Tobit 8: 
1-3; Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 213; Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, 
pp. 194-204; Thomas, Anthropological Report, p. 127. 

' Keller, Madagascar, p. 98. 

' Methodist Recorder (London), July 10, 1913. 

*° Milligan, Fetish Folk, p. 279. 



"FREE SPIRITS'' 109 

conciliated or offended; " that good spirits 
could be aroused to wrath by negled: or 
affront, while evil spirits could be appeased, 
mollified, or at least rendered harmless by 
right measures. Some of these spirits are 
portrayed as jealous and envious, particularly 
hostile to strangers, and disliking to hear 
praise of those mortals or their progeny who 
inhabit the land where these spirits live.^^ 
New Guineans, however proud of wife, chil- 
dren, or possessions, never praise them but 
always speak in deprecatory terms. They 
also dislike to go into the region of another 
tribe, even for medical treatment, lest the 
spirits there resident be offended and work 
them harm.^^ It will be seen at once how 
these beliefs affe(fl habits of travel and social 
intercourse. 

The varied names of different kinds of 
spirits are probably a legacy from very early 
times. We may gather something from our 
own folk-lore, which mentions fairies and 
pixies, gnomes, trolls, fauns, satyrs, and dwarfs, 
elves, vampires, and goblins, sirens, mermaids, 

" Cox, Folk-lore, chap. III. 

^ Parker, Village Folk Tales of Ceylon, i. i6, et passim. 

^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, pp. 86, 120. 



no ANIMISM 

and kelpies, nymphs, dryads, and naiads, and 
all their ilk, whose existence and habits are 
better known to nurses and nursery children 
than to the unimaginative scientist. While 
these creatures are not indeed the free spirits 
of whom we are speaking, they illustrate the 
belief in such spirits. For these familiars of 
childhood are no modern creation, they are 
survivals of pre-Christian faith, and like the 
free spirits have all the variety that wild 
imagination could conjure. ^^ 

It must not be forgotten, moreover, that the 
same fate may overtake them as could threaten 
gods themselves in ancient Egypt — they 
were not above the hap of death. In Ceylon 
the Yaka (a sort of evil spirit) is mortal.^^ It 
may be that out of this thought grew some of 
the notions respecfling the mentality of spirits. 
We have seen that they are placable and 
conciliable; they are also compellable and 
beguilable — by bluff, magic, or threat or 
use of means produdtive of results pleasant or 
repugnant to them.^^ 

" Thomas, Anthropological Report^ p. 27. 

15 Parker, Village Folk Tales, pp. 143, 265, 274. 

i« Tobit,8: 1-3; D'AWielh, Hibbert Ledures, pp. 87 fF.; Batche- 
lor, Jinu, pp. 42-43; Furness, Head-hunters, pp. 16-17; Weeks, 
Congo Cannibals, pp. 267 fF.; Kloss, In the Andamans, pp. 230 ff. 



''FREE SPIRITS" in 

It will at once appear how fruitful this idea 
is in connection with shamanism. Sometimes 
the only control of spirits and salvation of 
the people is through shamans. ^^ The Wol- 
lunqua of Central Australia, a snake spirit, 
can be either pacified or coerced by magical 
ceremonies into doing no harm to celebrants 
of certain rites. ^^ The Narrinyeri often have 
a mock fight in pretense of avenging a death 
accredited to sorcery. ^^ Some Australians are 
particularly assured that these spirits may be 
outwitted.^^ The Ceylonese are convinced that 
a Yaka (the man-eating demon referred to 
above) may be bluffed into good behavior.^^ 
The Ainu of Japan also regard spirits as 
beguilable.^2 

If spirits are compellable, submissive to 
control by mortals such as medicine men and 
the like, the way is open for a whole series of 
attacks in which not only the wills of the 
spirits but those of mortals, friends, and 

" Carruthers, Unknown Mongoliay i. 150 fF. 
** Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes^ p. 238. 
1^ Taplin, Narrinyeri, p. 21. 

^ Curr, Australian Race, i. 87; Howitt, Native Tribes, pp. 463, 
473»48i. 

21 Parker, Village Folk Tales, p. 149. 

22 Batchelor, Ainu, pp. 42-43. 



112 ANIMISM 

enemies combine to the resultant weal or woe 
of human beings. Wizardry and sorcery, 
with their awful fears and dread results, enter 
by this as by other doors. And this is by no 
means always sheer imposture, as the following 
shows. 

"The sorcerer believes in his own power, 
and the people believe in it too. Certainly 
the New Guinea philosophy of life is that 
nothing happens to man without some cause; 
no man dies a natural death, all suffering and 
sickness is due to evil spirits which people 
this world, and as, like many of his white 
brethren, he is quite prepared to take the 
good things of life unquestioning, and only to 
look for causes when evil comes, there is no 
place in his philosophy for good spirits; the 
good is but the normal state undisturbed by 
the machinations of evil spirits, and the evil 
spirits are usually set to work by some human 
agent. Though it seems that while the sor- 
cerer may use charms, working through the 
hair that has been mislaid when the head was 
shaven, or through the footprints, he is power- 
ful enough to work at times more direcflly. 
He is probably a man of stronger charadler 
than his fellows — like other trades, it runs in 



''FREE SPIRITS'* 113 

certain families — and the very fadl that he 
believes in his power, and others believe in it, 
tends to make him independent and strong 
in charadler. He thrives on his reputation, 
and levies blackmail on all and sundry till 
some evil day when patience has been ex- 
hausted, and an opportunity offers to put 
him out of the way. Ordinarily he is safe, 
for no one will touch him or interfere with 
him unless he can be taken by surprise, and 
there are always sufferers ready to take the 
first chance of doing that. How they used to 
terrorize the neighborhood and take toll! 
One old ruffian, whose reputation had spread 
far and wide, could go to villages far from 
home, and walk off with anything he fancied, 
the people sitting mum not daring to say a 
word, or hiding and skulking away as he 
passed through the village. One of the strong- 
est characters in a village miles away from 
where this villain lived said, 'Give me a 
guaranty that I shall not be called to account, 
and a gun so that I can shoot him when he 
\s not looking, and I will get rid of him, but 
I dare not touch him if his eyes are on me.'"^^ 
But apart from adion by these beings 

^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 78. 



114 ANIMISM 

which is determined by human will, desire, 
vengeance, and other passions, man is an 
objed of interest to the spirits themselves, 
and they show adlivity in one way or another, 
for good or for ill efFedt upon his fortunes and 
his person. It is, however, for ill that their 
principal adlivity is diredled, as estimated by 
primitives. They work mainly against man 
and his welfare. In Ceylon, for instance, 
where innumerable evil spirits are to be found, 
they are charged with every untoward happen- 
ing, either as themselves purposing it or as 
controlled or instigated by inimical magicians, 
or even because opportunity offers and their 
essential nature prompts to its seizure.^^ They 
interpenetrate the bodies of living men and 
cause illness; they may be expelled by divine 
power, and still, notwithstanding that they 
have done assault and damage, may demand 
and be accorded offerings, sacrifices, and 
libations. ^^ In facfl, among rude peoples, dis- 
eases are nearly universally attributed to evil 
spirits through the medium of possession.^^ 
Not seldom control is by a witch, in whose 

2* Parker, Village Folk TaUSf p. i6; cf. Gomes, Sea Dyaks of 
BorneOy pp. 194 fF. 

^^ Murray, Ancient Egyptian Legends^ pp. I iff. 
^^ Batchelor, Ainuj pp. 42-43. 



''FREE SPIRITS'' 115 

body the spirit of mischief takes up its resi- 
dence. Thence she sends it forth on its 
mission of evil, and thither it returns when 
its work is done. As she can thus by proxy 
efFedl evil, so can she cause it to cease.^^ Nat- 
urally this notion Hngers on into advanced 
stages of culture, as is witnessed by the 
frequent mention of demoniacs in the New 
Testament, to say nothing of the witchcraft 
delusion which came on down through the 
Middle Ages into comparatively modern times.^^ 
In these advanced stages it is not unusual for 
these demons to specialize, so to speak, in 
diseases; so that in China, India, and else- 
where there may be a cholera devil, a dog-god 
who sends whooping cough, etc.^^ Infants are 
particularly liable to attack.^° The normal 
result is that in some regions drugs and 
simples are little resorted to in sickness, 
medicine men and wizards are the main 
reliance or the only recourse.^^ These spirits 

*^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 83. 

28 Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, pp. 164 fF.; Thurston, Ow^wj 
and Superstitions, pp. 176, 196; Williamson, South Sea Savage, 
p. 286. 

"^ Cf. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, iii. 148 ff., 1181. 

2° Thomas, Anthropological Report, p. 71. 

" Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 183; lAE, vi. 85 ff. 



ii6 ANIMISM 

sometimes work in a way different from 
possession; for example, causing fever by 
enticing the soul from the body.^^ We may 
not forget that the madness of frenzy, whether 
as insanity or as prophetic mania, is regarded, 
as we have already had occasion to notice, 
as the result of possession.^^ 

The damaging activities of these spirits may 
be directed not only against the persons, but 
against the possessions and all the various 
operations and pursuits of humans.^^ And 
such evils may at times be prevented or 
remedied by means as weird as the alleged or 
supposed disease or hurt. For example, 
damage by spirits to a plot of agricultural 
ground may be prevented by killing, boiling, 
and burying a black cat by night under a 
tree in the field.^^ All along the line of these 
conceptions, the promptings to magical opera- 
tions are the nearly universal accompaniment. 

*" Seligmann, Melanesiansy pp. 185 ff. 

" Additional cases are cited in Thurston, Omens and Supef 
stitionSf pp. 254, 278, 279, 285. 

•* Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 245. 
»* Jahn, Opfergebrduchct p. 267. 



VIII 

LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF 
PARITY OF BEING 



VIII 

LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF 
PARITY OF BEING 

MANY and wide-branched are the results 
that flow from the anthropomorphizing 
by man of other objedls in nature, from the 
transference to them, in thought, of person- 
ahty with all its qualities, and from the con- 
ception that unseen and intangible, yet in 
eflFedl substantial, beings exist "free'* in the 
universe. Among the most interesting results 
are those that issue as almost a necessary 
consequence of this estimate of things — 
interchange of form and mode of being. 
Indeed, this lies on the very surface of the 
conception, although its logical relationship 
does not seem to have been pointed out. 

If man, stones, trees, plants, animals, spirits, 
and gods are all in the same scale of existence, 
why should they not exchange forms, undergo 
metamorphosis? Why should not the soul of 
a man enter the body of a being in what we 
regard as a different scale of existence and 

119 



120 ANIMISM 

animate it either in play or in earnest, volun- 
tarily or under stress of superior power exerted 
by some other superior in the necessary 
amount or quality of force, and do this either 
temporarily or permanently? What is to 
hinder, for example, man's becoming an animal, 
especially if he does not distinguish between 
his own being and that of an animal ? ^ Or, 
on the contrary, why should not animals 
become men? And why should not countless 
changes take place among other grades of 
existence? In fadl, according to savage man's 
account of things, all this does occur. Body 
and soul, we have seen, constitute a duality, 
in which, in the stage of thought we are 
examining, the soul is, so to speak, a free 
partner, able to take its flight and often to 
return and resume its normal activities in its 
own abode. It is the "separable" fadlor, 
with a life all its own, the seat of impulse, will, 
passion, and desire. We have, therefore, now 
to develop the fadt of the easy passage from 
what modern man would regard as one grade 
of existence to another, either lower or higher, 

* See above, p. 8, and cf. Rivers, Melanesian Society ^ i. 151 fF., 
where persons in Banks Islands are believed to be plants, animals, 
etc., with appropriate taboos. 



LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 121 

or the possession of qualities by one class of 
beings which in a more sophisticated stage 
of culture is considered the exclusive possession 
of a different class. 

Supernatural or semi-human beings are 
conceived as having or assuming the form of 
birds, animals, serpents, etc., in what we 
might call their normal state, but by putting 
off their covering of skin, feather, or scale may 
assume the human form divine. Among illus- 
trations of this occur with greatest frequency 
the mouse, jackal, monkey, dove, and tortoise.^ 
Obassi Osaw, one of the two great beings 
worshipped by the Etoi of Africa, was origin- 
ally a man and a chief.' In the Oceanican 
mythology the firemaking gods appear to 
have the form of birds.'* Maui, the Polynesian 
hero, was able to assume the form of animal, 
bird, or insect, and Rupe, another being in 
the same cycle of stories, changes himself into 
a bird.^ Among the Ainus a goddess may 

* Parker, Fillagt Folk Talesy pp. 308 fF.; Frere, Old Deccan 
Daysy pp. 183, 193; Stokes, Indian Fairy TaleSy pp. 41 fF.; Swyn- 
nerton, Indian Nights Entertainmenty p. 344; Natesu Sestri, 
Madana Kama Raja, pp. 56, 57. 

* Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 183, 184. 

* Westervelt, Legends of Mauiy passim. 
' lb., pp. 11, 20, 24, 38, 114, 125-126. 



122 ANIMISM 

become a flower, a woman, or a frog.^ Refer- 
ence may be made in passing to the gods of 
Egypt, with their composite make-up of bird, 
reptile, or beast and man. There seems to be 
good reason for holding that this composite 
form is not original, and that the partly 
human form is the result of the refining 
influence of culture. Originally, it seems, 
the forms were those of birds, beasts, etc. 
Certainly the explanation given that the gods 
were once in human form and that, hard 
pressed by their enemies, they took the form 
of beasts in order to deceive or elude their 
oppressors, is purely animistic and in accord 
with the principle under exposition. 

The cases where superhuman beings take 
human form are innumerable, apart altogether 
from the usual course of anthropomorphization 
of the gods. In the Old Testament the 
appearances to Adam, Abram, Lot, Gideon, 
and Manoah occur to the mind at once.^ In 
''Hordedefs Tale" four female deities and 
one male god assume human shape.^ 

This being so, it is not at all wonderful 

^ Batchelor, AinUy pp. 26, 262-263. 

' Gen. 3:8; 18: 2ff.; 19: i ff.; Judges 6: 12; 13:3, 9, etc. 

* Petrie, Egyptian Talesy i. 33 ff. 



LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 123 

that mating takes place between these different 
orders and that offspring partaking of the 
quahties of both are produced.® Especially 
do superhuman beings mate with humans, 
earth- and heaven-born beings marry. Out- 
side the mythology of classical Greece detailing 
the amours of the Olympians of both sexes 
from Zeus down, one may recall the union 
of the ''sons of God" and the daughters of 
men; the numerous cases in the poems of 
Homer, Pindar, and Vergil where the heroes 
boast a mingled ancestry partly divine; the 
many tribes whose eponym is a being semi- 
divine, such as the Koyis of India, who trace 
their origin to the union of Bhima and a wild 
woman; and the beautiful story of Ono 
(which is typical of several cycles of tales), 
who greatly longed for his ideal of feminine 
beauty. She finally appeared and became his 
wife. With the birth of their son there 
appeared also in the neighborhood a dog 
which became intensely hostile to Ono's wife. 
One day the animal attacked her with unusual 
fury; then in uncontrollable fear she resumed 
her former shape as a fox, leaped the fence, 
and disappeared. In this case the myth has 

• Rivers, Melanesian Societyy \. 25-26. 



124 ANIMISM 

a rather uncertain meaning: some construe 
it as indicating that a fox had assumed the 
form of a woman; another and more probable 
reading is that we have to do here with a sort 
of genie in animal shape; a third interpretation 
is that the fox shape was assumed for escape. 
The second rendering or the first accords with 
the hostility of the dog, which recognized 
his enemy though in another (human) form.^° 
With the prevalence of such views as these 
it is not strange that the origin of children is 
often sought not in the sexual adl but in some 
chance affair, and that "miraculous" con- 
ception or even the virgin birth is no stranger 
in popular beliefs. ^^ It must be remembered, 
in considering this particularly errant idea, 
that nine months elapse between conception 
and birth, and a considerable number of weeks 
between conception and the knowledge that 
a new life has begun. The idea is therefore 
not surprising to one who realizes how aberrant 
is savage reasoning in tracing cause and 
efFecfl. And when to this added the conserva- 

1" Gen. 6: 1-4; Thurston, Omens and Superstitionsy p. 78; 
Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy p. 340; J. C. Berry, in Blakes- 
lee, Japan and Japanese- American Relations^ p. 139. 

^1 Milloue, in Revue de Vhistoire de la religiony xlix (1904), 
34-47. 



LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 125 

tism of the primitive thinker, the tenacity with 
which he holds to notions that have once 
gained entrance, the fear of letting go of these 
notions and of admitting that what has been 
his faith is mistaken, we may begin to realize 
how such beliefs, once entertained, persist. 
Thus, in the New Hebrides "women sometimes 
have a notion that the origin, the beginning, 
of one of their children is a cocoanut, or a 
breadfruit." ^^ Mr. Frazer points out what is 
indicated above, that the connexion between 
sexual intercourse and conception is unknown. ^^ 
To the more sophisticated, indeed, this error 
seems not only impossible but literally ridicu- 
lous. Mr. Frazer goes on to show that at 
the moment when life is first perceived the 
mother may be intensely observant of some 
natural objedl, and [^through the ideas of 
interpenetration of spirit to be dealt with 
later] she supposes being or power to have 
passed from the objedl, entered her body, and 
produced the efFedl she feels. Consequently 
**she might imagine that the spirit of a 
kangaroo, of grass-seed, of water, or of a 
gum-tree (or of any other objecfl) had passed 
into her, and accordingly that her child . . . 

" Codrington, J J I, xviii. 310-311. ^^ fji^ Sept. 1905. 



126 ANIMISM 

was really a kangaroo . . . though to the 
bodily eye it presented the outward form of a 
human being." Mr. Todd has also registered 
the fad:^^ that conception is ascribed to various 
objects, animate and inanimate. Among 
American Indians rain falling on a maiden's 
navel induces conception.^^ And among the 
Nigerian peoples a child may come into being 
through incarnation of a human spirit or by 
the entrance into the mother of tree-spirits.^^ 

If human beings can arise from sources 
such as these, it will not come as a surprise if 
we find that whole tribes trace descent from 
animals or plants, or make alHances with 
them. This, however, raises the large question 
of totemism, which can not be treated here. 
Mention is made of the subjecfl in order to 
avoid the appearance of overlooking this very 
important phase or consequence of animistic 
thinking. The single example may be noted 
here of the Etoi of Africa, who hold the crab 
to have been grandfather to a tribe.^^ 

One of the important results of this mode of 
thought is the belief that men, either volun- 

" Todd, Primitive Family y pp. 70 fF. 

1^ Fewkes, American Ethnology y iSth Report, pp. 44, 48, 65, etc. 

^® Thomas, Anthropological Report, p. 31. 

" Talbot, In the Shadow oj the Bush, p. 196. 



LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 127 

tarily or under force majeure exercised by 
sorcerer or witch, pass from the human to 
the brute form of Hfe. Among the con- 
comitants of the belief in witches existent as 
late as in the eighteenth century and so 
balefully dominant during the Middle Ages, 
in Europe, were the notion of were-wolves 
and the idea that witches took the forms of 
cats, hares, or bats. Many are the tales of 
deadly destrudlion wrought by fiendish humans 
who, to sate a gluttony for blood or for revenge, 
transformed themselves into wolves and per- 
formed wolfish deeds. Equally well-known 
are the tales, not told as mere fidlion but held 
as truth, of the conversion, as by Circe in the 
Odyssey y of men into beasts, or, as in the 
Arabian Nights, into stones or other forms of 
non-human being. A few cases only will be 
cited here of the persistence of such beliefs 
among primitive races of the present. Par- 
ticularly in Africa is this idea widely diffused. 
The leopard-man is as real to the people of 
West Africa as was the were-wolf to the 
European peasant of the fifteenth century. 
This leopard-man assumes at pleasure the 
form of the animal from which he takes his 
name, preying on strangers or on his own 



128 ANIMISM 

people.^^ The Fangs hold that under the 
magic of an enemy they may be changed into 
monkeys.^^ In Oceanica Maui transforms an 
enemy into a dog.^° Among the Dyaks a man 
may be suspedled of changing himself into a 
tiger, and is immune to ordinary methods of 
punishment. Only strong medicine is equal 
to the task of discipline.^^ In other parts of 
Malaysia also men transform themselves into 
tigers or into fishes, and a woman becomes an 
ape.^^ In India it would seem as if there were 
hardly any animal shape which may not be- 
come the refuge of man or the means of his 
working evil deeds.^^ In other words, as the 
gods of Egypt were regarded as abandoning 
in part their own shape and taking that of 
animals, birds, or reptiles, so human beings 
could put on the forms or grades of life of lower 
animals (as we regard them and primitive 
peoples did not).^^ 

"^ Milligan, Fetish Folk, p. 33; Talbot, In the Shadow of the 
Bushy pp. 71, 82, 191-195, 247-254, and chap. VII. 
1^ Milligan, pp. 123-124. 
^ Westervelt, Legends of Mauiy p. 80. 

21 Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneoy pp. 265-278. 

22 Skeat, Malay Magic t p. 162; Cox, Folk-lore^ chap. II. 
^' Thurston, Omens and Superstitions^ p. 260, et passim. 

^ Interesting reading on this whole subjed of metamorphosis 
will be found in Lang's Mythy Ritual and Religiony chap. IV. 



LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 129 

One may go still farther and find humans 
transforming themselves into inanimate 
objeds. So the Basques have a story of a 
witch who determined to drown the crew of a 
fishing boat. The boat was to meet three 
waves, the first and second of which the boat 
might ride, but the third, which would be the 
witch herself, would overwhelm the boat and 
its crew. But the cabin boy overheard the 
plot and the means of foiling it also came to 
him, so he launched a harpoon into the heart 
of the third wave, which divided and dashed 
on the shore, a mass of bloody foam. On the 
captain's return, he found his wife dying of 
her wound.^^ 

Sometimes, before power can be obtained 
to efFedl these transformations, either on self 
or on another, some magical rite or process 
must be performed or undergone, or some 
chance happening must have been encountered. 
In the Far East a common belief is that an 
animal that has drunk water which has lain 
for twenty years in a human skull acquires 
power to assume the human form at will.^^ 
This is alleged to have been the case of a vixen 

*^ Vinson, Le Folk-lore du Pays Basque, p. 20. 

*« C. T. CoUyer, in Baltimore Christian Advocate, Odl. 23, 1913. 



130 ANIMISM 

in China, who became a woman, the "Cleo- 
patra of the East,'' and this transformation 
led to the founding of the first kingdom in 
Korea. 

If the higher ranks of life might be changed 
into lower grades, the reverse process was 
equally possible. It is established that in 
Egypt the pradlice was prevalent which until 
recent times was current throughout Africa of 
sacrificing attendants upon the death of a 
chief that their souls might serve his in the 
spirit world. But the softening efFed:s of 
culture in the Nile land refined away in early 
historic times this cruel custom. The problem 
remained — how provide service for the dead 
nobles and chiefs? The difficulty was sur- 
mounted by magic. Images of clay and 
pottery were created and placed in the tomb, 
and these, by utterance of the magic formula, 
were animated in the spirit world as attendants 
of the deceased. These little figures, called 
ushahtiuy are found literally by hundreds in 
the tombs of Egypt. There is reason to 
believe that the same principle was employed 
in Korea, Japan, China, and Mongolia. There 
at the tombs are often found, in clay, wood, 
and stone, effigies of attendants and of various 



LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 131 

animals. The most reasonable explanation of 
these, which is borne out by explanations 
given to the writer by Koreans, is that these 
were supposed to be animated in the spirit 
world to do the will of the deceased nobles 
or rulers at whose tombs they were placed. 
Confirmation of this is found in the Nihongi 
(one of the books of Japan coming nearest in 
estimation to that we render to our Scrip- 
tures), where the book professes to give an 
account of events occurring 2 B.C.-3 a.d. 
The story narrates the burial up to the neck 
of the personal attendants of a deceased 
brother of the mikado, this being the method 
of execution in such cases. But the laments 
of the victims so afFedled the mikado that when 
the empress died, clay figures were substituted. 
The dating of this event is probably wrong, 
since at the funeral of an empress in 247 a.d., 
sacrifice of attendants was still in vogue.^^ 

2^ Aston, Shinto, pp. 56-58; Underwood, Religions of Eastern 
Asia, pp. 89-90. 



IX 

DEATH NOT ALWAYS REGARDED 
AS INEVITABLE 



IX 

DEATH NOT ALWAYS REGARDED 
AS INEVITABLE 

A FACT that has been before us inci- 
dentally, though not the subjed of 
specific remark, is the age-long behef in the 
continued existence of the soul. We have 
noted that the soul is "the separable fador'' 
in man's duaHty, "with a Hfe all its own/* 
It would be normal then next to examine this 
continuance of life beyond death, to determine 
its charadler. But before discussing primitive 
conceptions concerning the dead, their state 
and powers, it is important to note that there 
are hints from widely separated regions which 
suggest that once there was a belief nearly or 
quite universal that death is not inevitable. 
It is likely that in the youth of the race, death 
was practically always the result of violence — 
from man or beast — or of accident. And it 
follows from what we have just noticed of the 
parity of being and the attribution of life to 
135 



136 ANIMISM 

insensate objedls, that even accidents would not 
be recognized as such but would be interpreted 
as the result of purposive adtivities. Moreover, 
evidence is abundant that, in a somewhat ad- 
vanced stage of human history, man was a con- 
temporary of huge and ferocious animals which 
have become extindl. While cave deposits re- 
veal that he knew how to master some of 
these, on the other hand it must be conceded 
that cave men must often have succumbed, if 
all did not eventually lose their lives, to the 
attacks or have come off second best in the 
encounters which they themselves brought on. 
The increase in the numbers of human beings 
is always attended by the mastery and ex- 
tinction of beasts of prey. In the days when 
men were few and beasts were present in 
numbers now hardly conceivable, the number 
of casualties to men either in the hunt or 
when themselves hunted must have been 
great. We have to take into account also 
feuds among men in the undisciplined state. 
When the stage of culture was low, feuds between 
tribes and clans, which, be it remembered, 
were small in those days, were often waged to 
extindlion. Within the memory of man the 
sparseness of population in Australia has been 



DEATH NOT INEVITABLE 137 

with high probability of corredlness ascribed 
to the feuds which for a single reason raged 
between different tribes. The mortality from 
this cause must have been great. And how 
complete may have been the slaughter in such 
cases is seen when we remember that so late 
as the time of Samuel a numerous people was 
devoted to extindlion in the name of reHgion 
— in this case religion being the mask for 
human animosities.^ Under circumstances 
perhaps more numerous than we can imagine, 
men, women, and children were slaughtered 
to the last individual. 

From what has preceded in the way of 
showing early man's conceptions of the potency 
of things about him, what would now be 
regarded as accident was by him regarded as 
the result of purposive adlion by the objedls 
which seemed to work disaster. If a limb 
fell from a tree in a storm and killed a man, 
the explanation was that the tree had cast its 
weapon in anger, or the wind had, with intent, 
flung this missile with deadly aim. Stories 
have passed in recent times of African tribes 
that hewed down and chopped to bits a tree, 
a limb from which had caused the death of one 

1 I Sam. 15. 



138 ANIMISM 

of their number. Similarly, if a man were 
drowned by river or ocean, it was the angry 
flood or the offended sea which had removed 
from this life the deceased human. 

Recalling once more the steadfastness with 
which man holds to convidlions once enter- 
tained, remembering that the new has always 
had to fight, and fight hard, for entrance into 
his mind, we may regard the instances to be 
adduced in which the belief that death is 
always an ah extra event, to be accounted for 
by causes other than "natural," as illustrative 
of and probably presumptive of the existence 
of the same belief in much wider circles than 
those in which it now obtains. It is best 
accounted for as a "superstition," i.e., as 
"something left over from earlier times." To 
be sure, in some cases, perhaps in all, the 
belief has taken on the complexion of a more 
advanced culture, it explains the death by 
"spiritual" means instead of by mere brute 
or physical force. This is a way that super- 
stitions have. They fit themselves to the 
environment, mental or physical, which has 
wrapped itself about them. 

From Australia quite concordant testimony 
from competent observers is accessible. Thus 



DEATH NOT INEVITABLE 139 

R. B. Smyth cites the statement of Mr. Daniel 
Bunce (curator of the Botanical Gardens at 
Geelong), a man well acquainted with the 
blacks, to the efFedl that "no tribe he has ever 
met with believe in the possibility of a man's 
dying a natural death. If a man is taken ill, 
it is at once assumed that some member of a 
hostile tribe has stolen some of his hair. This 
is quite enough to cause serious illness. If 
the man continues sick and gets worse, it is 
assumed that the hair has been burned by 
his enemy. Such an adl, they say, is sufficient 
to imperil his life. If the man dies, it is 
assumed that the thief has choked his vidlim 
and taken away his kidney fat." 

Mr. Smyth continues: *'Mr. John Green 
says that the men of the Yarrow tribe firmly 
believe that no one ever dies a natural death. 
A man or a woman dies because of the wicked 
arts practised by some member of a hostile 
tribe." 2 

In Appendix 3 to the same work (ii. 289- 
290) Albert A. C. Le Souef accounts for the 
paucity of population in part by the fadl that 
a death by disease involves the death of others, 
because the first case was believed to be 

2 Aborigines of Fidoria, i. no. 



I40 ANIMISM 

caused by sorcery, and a murdering expedition 
is at once carried out for vengeance. (This 
in turn starts a blood feud, and so on.) 

Taplin remarks of the Narrinyeri: "When 
a man dies they conclude at once that sorcery 
has been the cause of the mournful event, and 
that either ngadhungi or millin [two methods 
of sorcery] have been practised against him." ^ 

Spencer and Gillen testify that "no such 
thing as natural death is realized by the 
native; a man who dies has of necessity been 
killed by some other man, or perhaps even by 
a woman." ^ 

Dawson's affirmation is quite concordant: 
"Natural deaths are generally — but not 
always — attributed to the malevolence and 
the spells of an enemy belonging to another 
tribe." ' 

In New Guinea the same belief holds, as 
witnessed by Newton. 

"About Wedau and Wamira the spirits of 
the dead go eventually to some place to 
the eastward of Cape Frere, in a valley in the 
mountains called lola, the approach to the 

® Narrinygrii in Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 19. 
* Native Tribes of Central Australiay p. 48. 
^ Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 63. 



DEATH NOT INEVITABLE 141 

abode of the spirits being through a hole 
in the ground. When the spirit arrives it 
is questioned at once, * Where have you come 
from?' 'What have you come for?' just as 
every time you go into a village every one 
who meets you asks you (these questions). 
The newly arrived one says, *I have come 
from Wedau' or 'Wamira,' as the case may 
be, or the answer may state more explicitly 
the sedlion of the village, and * Where else 
should I go except to my own people?' Then 
the question is asked, 'Who sent you?' and 
for answer the name of some sorcerer or 
witch is given, the one responsible for the 
death." 6 

Indirect testimony is furnished by Neuhass 
to the same effedl for German New Guinea, 
whose people separate souls with reference to 
post mortem continuance according as they 
died by the sword or by magic — the two 
methods which they recognize of passing from 
this life. The Mafulu of this island regard a 
death otherwise unaccounted for as due to 
spirits acfling under sorcerers. An exception 
is conceived, however, in the case of very old 
persons, which seems to show the transition 

^ In Far New Guineay p. 219. 



142 



ANIMISM 



to a more advanced knowledge."^ And in 
Hood Peninsula, British New Guinea, death 
is the result of the adivities of spirits or 
magicians.^ Gomes asserts that in Borneo 
all sickness (and therefore death not otherwise 
accounted for) by external means is caused 
by spirit possession.^ Among Melanesians: 
"It must ... be remembered that . . . death 
is not admitted to occur without some obvious 
cause such as a spear thrust. Therefore when 
vigorous and adlive members of the com- 
munity die, it becomes necessary to explain 
their fate, and such deaths are firmly believed 
to be produced by sorcery.'' ^° In far away 
Africa "nearly all diseases, bad luck, mis- 
fortune, sorrow, and death are caused by 
witchcraft, i.e., by some one using a fetish to 
curse a person." ^^ 

Among the Indians of Guiana, "Every 
death, every illness, is regarded not as the 
result of natural law, but as the work of a 
kenaima (i.e., a man possessed by a spirit for 
the purpose of blood revenge, and able to 

' Williamson, fFays of South Sea Savage, p. 286. 
8 7^7, xxviii (1899), 216 fF. 
' Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 183. 
^^ Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 279. 
" Weeks, Primitive Bakongo, p. 219. 



DEATH NOT INEVITABLE 143 

send his spirit forth to inflidl evil). Such a 

kenaima is . . . the real or supposed cause of 

almost every evil, and especially of every 
death." 12 

Concordant testimony is given by Brett: ^^ 
**A person dies — and it is supposed that an 
enemy has secured the agency of an evil spirit 
to compass his death." A sorcerer is em- 
ployed to discover the guilty individual, and 
a relative of the deceased is charged with the 
work of vengeance. He is a kenaima, pos- 
sessed by the spirit of destrucflion. 

It is the "left-overs" that often reveal to 
the discriminating observer the conditions 
which are implied, which surrounded the full 
bloom of what have become survivals. It is 
not difficult to imagine, and it is in accord 
with primitive psychology to presume, that 
the few cases here brought together, which 
might conceivably be much extended by 
definite research, suppose a much larger area 
over which such ideas were regnant. 

^ Im Thum, Among the Indians of Guianat p. 329. 
^ Indian Tribes of Guiana, pp. 357 ff. 



X 



THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE 
OF THE SOUL 



X 

THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE 
OF THE SOUL 

T^T'HILE according to the fadls adduced 
^ ^ in the last chapter it is clear that a 
belief has existed that man might, were it not 
for accident or the like, continue to live on as 
j a duality in this present life, the fadl of death 
\ stared men in the face, and with equal in- 
tensity the belief was held that in death man 
did not cease to exist, but that the soul lived 
^ on. That the appearance of the deceased in 
j dreams had no small part in the foundation of 
[ this belief seems almost certain. We have 
already seen ^ that dreams were regarded not 
as phantasies but as realities, and so the dead 
who were seen in the dream state were re- 
garded as souls of the deceased appearing to 
the living. And other lines of evidence no 
doubt seemed to open to primitive man. At 
any rate, the fadt of this belief, at least as far 
back as neolithic times, is evinced by the 

1 Above, pp. 23 fF. 
147 



148 ANIMISM 

burial with the dead of utensils evidently 
meant for the service of the deceased in the 
land where he found himself after death. 
This faith is shown also by the adls of devotion 
or worship to the departed spirit, and by 
material provision of food and other comforts 
for the soul either at the grave or elsewhere.^ 
Similarly evidential are the means taken to 
facilitate the soul's exit by door, window, or 
roof, even through holes made in the wall of 
house or tent; and the same value attaches 
to the evident effort to prevent the soul's 
return by carrying the corpse, to which it is 
supposed fondly to cling, by devious ways to 
its last resting place. Like conclusions are 
forced by the feasts and celebrations on 
anniversaries of death or burial, which attest 
not only afFedtionate remembrance, but first 
and principally belief in the soul's continuance. 
This belief in the soul's continuance is perhaps 

2 Graves of Greeks and Romans have been found where per- 
manent conduits in the grave mounds permitted the passage of 
liquids and viands to the corpse — cf. Frazer*s Pausaniasy X. 
4: 7, and the editor's comment on the passage; and the same 
is true of graves in Mongolia, though in this case the evident 
purpose was not the entry of food but the exit of the ghost, as 
the openings are at the side of the tomb — cf. Geographical 
Magazine f May, 19 13, p. 651. 



EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL 149 

the most momentous and the choicest, as well 
as the oldest, that animistic races have left 
to us. The clear beginning of the dodrine so 
prized in all religions save Gautama's, viz., 
that concerning the immortality of the soul, 
is here in its embryonic stage. We have 
already noted that one means, perhaps the 
chief one, to the acquisition of this idea was 
the appearance of the dead in dreams. The 
deceased, so the conclusion ran, was not dead, 
he still existed, and in his own form. It may 
be remarked, en passant, that if religion 
inheres at all in this belief, then religion is 
everywhere existent; for no race has yet been 
discovered which had not faith in the con- 
tinuance of life beyond the grave. Once more, 
if religion inheres not in belief but in the 
practices to which belief gives rise, then in 
the care for the well-being of the soul of one 
that has passed, so widely prevalent, religion 
is no less shown to be universal. 

To suppose, however, that the content of 
the primitive idea is that of full-fledged 
immortality or unending existence would be 
a serious misunderstanding. The conception 
of deathlessness in its absolute sense is prob- 
ably never present among savages. Primitive 



ISO ANIMISM 

philosophy does not sound so profound depths. 
Hence, because "immortaHty" says more 
than is contained in the savage's concepts of 
future Kfe, the word "continuance" has been 
employed to express the notion found among 
the uncivilized. On the other hand, one must 
be on his guard when it is affirmed that 
savages have no idea of immortality. In the 
strid: sense this is true, but only in so far as 
uncultured peoples have not reached any 
conception which at all approaches that of 
endlessness. They have no enduring records. 
Oral tradition, which may easily become 
confused and dim, carries them back only a 
few generations — four or five, say. So the 
notion of the soul life may be either indefinite 
— or rather, undefined — or may be regarded 
as limited to a certain number, greater or less, 
of lives like that already passed. Indeed, the 
life may have degrees, so to speak. Thus 
the African Etoi and Bakongo believe that 
*' though ghosts have died once, they can die 
a second time, and so become more dead than 
before."^ Among the Haida a war party is 
always accompanied by a shaman, among 

^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 8, 24, etc.; Weeks, 
Primitive Bakongo, pp. 223-224, 243-244. 



EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL 151 

whose duties is to kill the souls of the enemy. ^ 
In Fiji the natives believe that there is a 
certain Samu Yalo ("killer of souls") who 
haunts the path to the realm of the dead, and 
when a ghost comes along rushes out to kill it 
with an ax unless it succeeds in escaping. 
Another Fijian monster lies in wait and kills 
the souls of bachelors, so that they never 
reach heaven. In the same islands a ghost 
that is troublesome to the living may have 
his case settled by his unconditional demise.^ 
That mortals may die again seems reasonable 
if only it be remembered that even gods grow 
old and die, according to **the cultured 
Egyptians." ''Very aged was Ra, and the 
saliva ran down from his mouth and fell upon 
the earth" — a perfed: pidlure of senility.^ 
Heiti-eibib, a Hottentot hero-god, had the 
habit of dying.^ In Polynesia Maui's wife 
used also to kill the gods.^ 

* Swanton, Jesup North Pacific Expedition, i. 40-51, cited by 
Halliday, Greek Divination, p. 95. 

^ Williams, Fiji, i. 244 fF.; Wilkes, U. S. Exploring Expedition, 
iii. 85. 

•' ® M.urT2.y, Ancient Egyptian Legends, p. 81; cf. Wiedemann, 
Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 54 fF. 

^ Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, pp. 56 fF. 

^ Westervelt, Legends of Maui, p. 127. 



XI 

MODIFICATIONS OF THE IDEA 
OF CONTINUANCE 



XI 



MODIFICATIONS OF THE IDEA 
OF CONTINUANCE 

^ I ^HE continuance of the human soul's 
-■- Hfe is conditioned in various ways in 
different regions and stages of culture. Some 
tribes assign to souls a definite number of 
post-mortem lives, which number may, how- 
ever, have stood for indefinite continuance, 
being the tradition remaining from an earlier 
stage when ability to count above a small 
aggregate was uncommon. Thus Dyaks allot 
to the soul seven lives, after which it is anni- 
hilated.^ Or continuance may be not the 
common fate, only that of a seledl few. The 
basis of seledlion then naturally varies.^ It 
may be that of descent or station in life. Thus 
only chiefs survive in Fiji, and among the 
Tongans of the South Sea Islands.^ Or the 

^ Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p, 208. 
^ Carpenter, Comparative Religion, p. 232. 
' Mariner, Natives of Tonga Islands, ii. 129 ff. 
15s 



156 ANIMISM 

mode of death may have something to do 
with it, as when New Guineans separate 
souls according as they died by sword or by 
magic — the two causes of death allowed to 
exist by this people.^ Or (and this state of 
affairs exists, almost certainly, only in a 
somewhat advanced stage of culture) ethical 
standards may be established, and future 
life may be conditioned on compliance with 
such standards in this life. Such an idea may 
be found in a comparatively small area, 
neighboring regions showing no knowledge 
of such a test.^ On the other hand, it has 
happened that while such standards ostensibly 
exist, magical practices in efFed: reduce the 
test to its lowest terms or even to the vanish- 
ing point. So with the "Negative Confession " 
of Egypt. This is clear from its evident use 
by pradlically every or any person, independent 
of characfler, who was by the formula of the 
Book of the Dead primed to override or evade 
obstacles to the passing of the soul to the 
happy abode.^ In parts of Melanesia the 
ultimate death of the soul is maintained, its 

* Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-GuineUi iii. 149 ff. 
^ Codrington, MelanesianSf pp. 274 ff. 
6 HR, March, 1914. 



MODIFICATIONS 157 

survival seeming to depend on survival in 
the memory of posterity J 

A different twist is given to the idea of 
continuance when the notion takes either of 
two somewhat closely related forms of expres- 
sion, transformation or human reincarnation. 
Transformation, or change of mode of ex- 
istence on earth, we have seen to be a natural 
consequence of that "parity of being" which 
is the prime characteristic of the animistic 
manner of thought. Is there any reason, 
a priori, why this should not operate when 
the soul is discarnate, unfleshed ? As a matter 
of fadl, the continuance of the soul in other 
forms of existence than the human is a widely 
diffused notion. Transmigration is not limited 
to philosophic developments like Buddhism, 
with its Jataka Tales of the 500 births of the 
Buddha. Indeed, it is pradlically certain that 
the transmigration of philosophic India is one 
of the noblest and most fruitful borrowings of 
the Aryans from the Kolarian and Dravidian 
aborigines. When these post-mortem trans- 
formations take place, the continuance may 
be indefinite or definitely limited. The Kai 
of German New Guinea hold that ghosts are 

' Seligmann, Melanesiansy p. 192. 



158 ANIMISM 

changed first into some sort of game animals, 
then into insecfts, and then comes "the last 
death." ^ This suggests the idea of a progres- 
sive diminution of vitaHty or fading away 
into nothingness, and may be a result of 
observation of the fading memory of survivors. 
In Melanesia, where ethical ideas condition 
future life, after doing penance, the soul takes 
the form of various animals, such as the 
flying fox.® Transformation into an owl is a 
frequent notion, as among the Arabs, and in 
Madagascar among the Haida.^° One Cinga- 
lese woman (who has been murdered) becomes 
successively a turtle, a mango tree, a creeper, 
and a blue lotus. Another changes into a 
cobra. ^^ In the Solomon Islands ghosts are 
incarnated in various animals, while among 
the Melanesians men at death became sharks, 
alligators, lizards, birds (the frigate bird par 
excellence), snakes, and the like.^^ The rein- 
carnation or appearance of the dead in the 

8 Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, lii. 150 ff. 

^ Brown, Melanesians, pp. 192 fF. 

^° Doutte, L' Jfrique du Nord, p. 361; Folk-lore, ii. 341; Swan- 
ton, North Pacific Expedition, p. 27. 

^^ Parker, Village Folk Tales oj Ceylon, pp. 113 ff., 132. 

" Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 65; Codrington, Mela- 
nesians, pp. 179 ff. 



MODIFICATIONS 159 

form of snakes is both common and ancient; 
it is, of course, easily accounted for by the 
frequency of the animal among graves, the 
looseness of the earth and the crevices therein 
making easy the formation of their burrows. 
The reader of Homer and Vergil will recall 
the pertinent cases there narrated, while the 
vases and other monuments of art abundantly 
illustrate the belief — although sometimes the 
idea is modified by regarding the reptile as 
the "genius" of the departed. The natural- 
ness of the idea is attested by its occurrence 
in regions as widely separated as New Guinea 
and Colombia.^^ Among the Mafulu of New 
Guinea the ghost may be transformed into a 
fungus living on the mountain.^* And among 
the Narrinyeri of Australia rocks may be the 
form taken by deceased ancestors. ^^ 

Belief that the soul is reincarnated in 
human posterity is so natural, once the idea 

13 Miss Harrison, Prolegomena and Themis^ -passim; Neuhass, 
Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 515 fF.; Joyce, South American Arche- 
ology, p. II. 

1^ Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 281. 

15 Wood, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 202. Other 
cases in other parts of the world may be found in Decle, Three 
Tears in Africa, p. 74; Das, Journey to Lhasa, pp. 56, 13 iff., 
138, etc.; YitWer, Madagascar, p. ^^-j Folk-lore, n. ^'^J; Arctander, 
Apostle of Alaska, p. 105. 



i6o ANIMISM 

of transmigration is entertained, that it can 
not surprise us to find it widespread. When 
we remember how feature and gesture of 
infant or child may recall those of some 
deceased member of the family, one fruitful 
source of this idea may perhaps be disclosed. 
For the notion is not the exclusive possession 
of the philosophical, though we have stories 
from Greece, where it was incorporated in 
philosophical creeds, of men who recognized 
votive offerings dedicated in a former exist- 
ence, or find poets like Vergil recounting the 
method of return and telling of the antecedent 
draught from the waters of Lethe. So well 
known is the belief that only a few typical 
cases need be adduced from primitive examples. 
Baganda women fear to pass places where 
executions have taken place or spots alleged 
to be haunted by dangerous ghosts, lest the 
ghosts enter them to begin another earthly 
life.^® Similarly the Bakongo of the Congo 
region hold firmly to the reincarnation of the 
human spirit in human form.^^ So usual a 
happening is this among the Ibo of Nigeria 

1® Roscoe, The Baganda^ pp. 20, 46, 124, et passim; cf. pp. 47, 
289. 

1^ Weeks, Primitive Bakongo^ p. 115. 



MODIFICATIONS i6i 

that, when a birth takes place, the dodlor is 
called in to decide which ancestor has come 
back to earth. Indeed, an ancestor may 
there scissate and become incarnate in more 
than one descendant in any given generation. ^^ 
The Kayans of Borneo also hold firmly to the 
docflrine, as do various tribes of Australian 
Bushmen. ^^ 

The same principle of parity of being permits 
interchange and transformation, to which we 
have become now so accustomed, to take place 
in another diredlion. The ghost may be 
changed into an evil spirit or demon or equally 
repulsive form. A Cingalese spirit which had 
temporarily left its body returned to find that 
body untenantable and addressed his wife in 
a dream. She supposed that he had become 
a Yaka (evil spirit) and was correspondingly 
terrified. Of course the wife's explanation to 
herself of the dream is excellent evidence of 
belief in the possibiHty and aduality of such 
transformations. ^° The Melanesian ghosts 
may assume the form of compositely-shaped 

*8 Thomas, Anthropological Report, pp. 30-31. 

1^ Hose and McDougall, Pagan Tribes, ii. 47; Spencer and 
Gillen, Native Tribes, pp. 119 ff., 335 fF., and Northern Tribes, pp. 
i45flF., 33ofF., 448ff. 

20 Parker, Village Folk Tales of Ceylon, p. 170. 



i62 ANIMISM 

demons. 2^ The souls of the dead may in some 
cases become vampires and feed horribly on 
the living — indeed this terrible habit may 
have been formed before death. ^^ See also 
below (Chap. XII) for other transformations. 

21 Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 258 fF. 

22 Talbot, In the Shadow 0} the Bush, pp. 192-193. 



XII 

CONDITION OF THE DISCARNATE 
SOUL 



XII 

CONDITION OF THE DISCARNATE 
SOUL 

SINCE evidence of the existence of the 
belief that the soul lives on is so indubit- 
able, the question arises — what is its condi- 
tion? In what state does the discarnate spirit 
find itself after final separation from the body? 
And first, as to what we may be allowed to 
call, for want of a better term, its physical 
condition. 

We have already noted that soul is con- 
ceived as having both form and substance, the 
latter, so to speak, greatly rarefied. More- 
over, it has been brought to our attention 
that the most common idea concerning form 
is that the soul is a replica of the body it 
inhabited. Consistency in primitive thinking 
is not to, be assumed, as we have seen, nor are 
logical processes among primitives quite the 
same as ours. Yet when a disembodied soul 
took up its post-mortem residence in a serpent, 
for example, we may not suppose that that 
i6s. 



i66 ANIMISM 

soul was still regarded as human in shape. 
But so far as the author has discovered, no 
decisive evidence exists on this point. The 
probabilities favor greatly the supposition 
that in such cases transformation of the soul 
shape was supposed to have taken place. 
Evidence of the common idea, retention by 
the soul of its human shape, has been before 
us. We have noted that some tribes mutilate 
the body of the dead, thinking that by so doing 
they inflidl like wounds upon the soul and 
thus impose incapacity for harm upon the 
ghost, the double of the body. The Omahas 
slit the soles of a murdered man's feet that 
his spirit may be unable to return and cause 
damage to the people.^ Mangaeans prefer 
death in battle — men are then in their full 
strength; disease weakens them, and souls 
have the nature of the body at death. 
Barongo believe that souls are young or old, 
according to the age at death, and so do the 
Indians of Gran Chaco. Naga tribes of 
Manipur think that ghosts bear whatever 
tattoo marks, mutilations, or other blemishes 
or embellishments occurred on the body. 
Some people carry this idea so far as to prefer 

* Fletcher and La Flesche, lyth Reporty etc., p. 215, 



IHE DISCARNATE SOUL 167 

death before decay of natural powers sets in, 
and so commit suicide or are buried alive, 
that the soul may continue to exist in full 
vigor.2 

Having form and substance, the soul has 
certain physical needs. It hungers, thirsts, 
feels cold and heat. The degrees of grossness 
of these wants vary greatly. Sometimes the 
hunger, thirst, and wants and passions may be 
appeased by the mere spirit or ghost of food, 
drink, etc.; and the ghosts are served by the 
spirits or (as our theosophical friends might 
be imagined as saying) the astral bodies of 
dishes, implements, or weapons which are 
destroyed (i.e., killed) that their spirits may 
accompany the ghost into the spirit land. 
Indeed, this is by all odds the most prevalent 
conception. Sometimes it is the more evanes- 
cent or the more vital elements, such as the 
blood, which are used by the ghost, as in the 
celebrated case of Tiresias in the Odyssey.^ 
The cases already cited of food, drink, weapons, 
utensils, and the like possessing souls and 
being offered or placed with the dead, often- 
times being broken or mutilated so as to "kill" 

2 Cases are cited in Frazer's Dying God, pp. 9-14. 
. 3 Book XL 



i68 ANIMISM 

them, furnish diredl testimony to the supposed 
needs of the ghost. The hunger felt by the 
disembodied soul Is vividly expressed by most 
African tribes, whose belief is that ghosts can 
and do eat even human bodies.^ Ghosts also 
suffer from cold, hence New Guineans, and 
others, make fires at the graves, and even 
build huts, so that when the ghosts come up 
from the body they may find comfort.^ 

Ghosts have voices, too, but thin and 
shadowy like themselves. They chirp like 
crickets or utter their words in whistling tones. 
So the wizards by ventriloquistic art impose 
upon the credulous, and by wheezing utterance 
produce the efFed: of communications from a 
shadowy being or from the ground. Note 
the indications of shamanistic pradlice in 
the Prophet Isaiah (8: 19; 29: 4). 

What we may regard as the disposition of 
the ghost is by most peoples held to be fixed 
by the charader of the person while on earth. 

* Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 224-225, 232-233, 
238, etc.; EREy vi. 65 fF. The testimony is being exhaustively 
coUeded in Frazer, Belief in Immortality — see the Index, under 
"Food." 

^ Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, pp. 442 ff.; Neuhass, 
Deutsch Neu-Guineay iii. 518; Frazer, Belief in Immortality, i. 
150-152. 



THE DISCARNATE SOUL 169 

Was he cruel, warlike, passionate, generous, 
revengeful in the body, so will he be as a 
discarnate ghost. So, for instance, the New 
Guineans hold.^ Only account must be taken 
of a very common notion, that the ghost is 
endowed with increased power.^ One might 
find many reasons for this common idea. The 
general fearsomeness of the unknown and 
invisible, the fad that the ghost has joined 
the terrible host of free spirits, its very remote- 
ness, combine to add the idea of power. 
That which is distant in space or time gains 
enchantment and enlargement from the im- 
agination, which is the faculty most employed 
in this sphere. AustraHans credit to their 
ancestors deeds to themselves impossible, 
though they are themselves their ancestors 
reincarnate.^ The greed and liking for pos- 
sessions which existed on earth are attributed 
in some parts to the spirit, and among the 
Bakongo, for instance, this desire is satisfied 
by placing all the deceased's wealth about 
the grave.^ The soul's assumed mobility, 

• Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iil. 142 ff. 
' Roscoe, Baganda^ pp. 282 fF. 

* Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes^ pp. 489 S 
' Weeks, Primitive Bakongo^ p. 278. 



170 ANIMISM 

such as was displayed in its power to leave 
the body during life and to make investiga- 
tions at even a considerable distance, is not 
lost but rather enhanced. It has become a 
free agent, no longer bound by the body's 
necessities and limitations of locomotion, at 
liberty to roam unfettered, to use in the wide 
universe its powers — those that remain or 
are acquired in its new condition. If it in 
earthly life could leave the body temporarily 
and like the lightning speed hither and thither, 
now, disfleshed, its mobility has gained by 
the change. 

Especially is it believed that spirits acquire 
a larger knowledge. Not only do they gain 
a completer survey of the past and the present, 
but a knowledge of the future becomes theirs. 
According as their dispositions prompt, they 
become helpers of their survivors or hostilely 
adlive against them. 

Particularly interesting in this connection 
is the relationship of the ghost and other 
beings to warning and predidlion. Among 
the powers of the soul is that of return and 
manifestation to survivors. Melanesian, 
Andaman, and African ghosts, for instance, 
reappear to and converse with their people 



THE DISCARNATE SOUL 171 

and become a medium of information.^^ Par- 
ticularly through dreams do they mediate — 
a performance recorded in antiquity and 
attested by present day belief over a large 
area.^^ Indeed, it is through the dream that 
approach to human comprehension is most 
easily made by divine, superhuman, or dis- 
carnate powers, the spirit in this condition 
being loosed from fleshly trammels. The 
human spirit in sleep is regarded as not 
bound by quite the same inflexible laws to the 
bodily limitations. The employment of the 
dream as a means of information or warning 
at once occurs to the reader — Jacob, Joseph, 
Pharaoh, Nebuchadrezzar; classical cases will 
be found in Pindar, Olympiacs, XIII, 105, 
and Pausanias, X, xxxiii, 11. It will be 
remembered that in an earlier section the 
importance of the dream as an index to 
animistic thought was dwelt upon at some 
length. One specimen of developed classical 
and philosophical thought on this has been 
summarized from Jamblichus. 

^^ Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 190 ff.; Kloss, In the Jndamans, 
p. 296; Weeks, Congo Cannibals, pp. 264-265. 

11 Herodotus, IV, 172; Pomponius Mela, I. viii. 8; Mauss, 
Origines des pouvoirs magiques, p. 15; Haddon, Anthropological 
Essays, p. 179. 



172 ANIMISM 

"There is nothing unworthy of belief in 
what you have been told concerning sleep and 
the meaning of dreams. I will explain it 
thus. The soul has a twofold life, a lower 
and a higher. In sleep the soul is released 
from the constraint of the body, and enters 
as one emancipated on its divine life of in- 
telligence. Then as the noble faculty which 
beholds the objedls that truly are, the objecfls 
in the world of intelligence, stirs within and 
awakens to its power, who can be surprised 
that the mind, which contains within itself 
the principles of all that happens, should in 
this, the state of liberation, discern the future 
in those antecedent principles which will 
make that future what it is to be.? The 
nobler part of the soul is thus united by 
abstradlion to higher natures, and becomes a 
participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge 
of the gods. Recorded examples of this are 
numerous and well authenticated; instances 
too occur every day. Numbers of sick by 
sleeping had their cure revealed to them in 
dreams. Would not Alexander's army have 
perished but for a dream in which Dionysius 
pointed out the means of safety? Was not 
the siege of Aphritis raised through a dream 



THE DISCARNATE SOUL 173 

sent by Jupiter Ammon to Lysander? *The 

night time of the body is the daytime of the 
soul.'" ^2 

The student of anthropology will at once 
recognize here the advanced justification for 
beliefs which go back very far for their origins. 
But even in the advanced stage of thought 
represented by Jamblichus there are present 
elements that are duplicable today in the most 
primitive regions. 

Several doors open here to alluring bypaths 
— to inspiration, predicflion, oracles, on the 
one side, these presuming a favoring disposi- 
tion on the part of the ghost; and, on the 
other, to necromancy and the "black art" or 
black magic, if the ghost or his control be evil. 
Melanesians and Africans say that the soul 
may return to seize and inspire the unconscious 
shaman or prophet to pregnant utterance.^^ 
We have said "unconscious" — for it seems 
pradlically established that, in the earlier 
stages of culture, predidlion and the delivery 
of the oracle took place only when the medium 
was in ecstasy. Vergil's description of the 

^2 Theurgia or the Egyptian Mysteries^ Part III, chap. vii. 
" Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 218 ff.; Roscoe, Baganda, 
p. 113- 



174 ANIMISM 

raging sybil will recur to the classical student.^^ 
Plato says that "inspired and true divination 
is not attained to by anyone in his full senses, 
but only when the power of thought is fettered 
by sleep or disease, or some paroxysm of 
frenzy. "^^ It is well known that the American 
Indians regarded the simple or mentally 
incompetent as peculiarly endowed and in 
closer touch with the supernatural than those 
possessed of all their mental powers. In the 
Old Testament there is an unconscious testi- 
mony to the veracity of many parts of the 
narrative, guaranteed by psychological con- 
clusions, in the fadl that the earlier phases of 
prophecy and predidtion are described as 
involving the ecstatic state or a condition of 
unconsciousness. Such are the use of the 
dream, the case of Balaam, the prophets 
among whom Saul found himself, this form of 
aflFedlion being communicable or "catching" 
— compare the "dancing mania" of the 
middle ages — and Elisha, for whom music 
was in at least one case a prerequisite to the 
delivery of the oracle — the "hand of the 
Lord" (2 Kings 3:15) being the Old Testament 
expression for the modern psychological term 

" ^neid, VI, 45 flP., 77 fF. is Timaeus, 71. 



THE DISCJRNJTE SOUL iJS 

"ecstasy" adopted from the Greek. So among 
perhaps most primitive peoples, like the 
Melanesians and Africans referred to above, 
warnings from the supernatural and even 
knowledge of other matters, as of charms, 
are supposed to be received under such 
conditions. ^^ 

Ghosts do not figure merely as indicators of 
coming events or as guardians against evil 
fortune. Their larger capacity for adlion may 
make them powerful intercessors with still 
higher supernatural beings or spirits, through 
shamans who control them or know them 
intimately.^'' Or their own success in their 
earthly vocation makes them interested in 
survivors who follow their trade. In Africa 
the spirit of a dead hunter is powerful to help 
in the chase, and is propitiated to that end.^^ 
In Melanesia the help of ghosts in securing 
the right kind of weather, in performing feats 
of healing, in success with the fishing net or 
line, and in agriculture is obtained by sacrifices 

*^ So the Australians: Howitt, Native Tribes^ pp. 435-437. 
On the fads at large cf. Carpenter, Comparative Religioriy pp. 181- 
182. 

" Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 243. 

^ Weeks, Primitive Bakongo, pp. 181-183. 



176 ANIMISM 

and offerings. ^^ Indeed, from the inhabitants 
of Ghosttown may come some of the good 
gifts, agricultural, for instance, which make 
life worth living.^ The spirits of the dead may 
keep a watchful eye upon survivors, preventing 
or punishing infradions of tribal customs that 
involve offence to themselves, and warning 
against repetition by inflidling sickness or 
failure in various enterprises.^^ Foundation 
sacrifice had the purpose of procuring for the 
structure the protection of the spirits of the 
dead.22 

On the other hand, ghosts may be among 
the spirits whose malevolence needs to be 
guarded against. In fadl, among the post 
mortem transformations may be that into ill 
disposed spirits. Usually, when this is con- 
ceived to be the case, the cause is found in 
some misfortune in life or death. Among 
the Ibo, for instance, a childless woman, a 
wifeless or moneyless man, or a suicide may 
as ghosts attempt to increase the population 

" Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 132 fF.; Lambert, Moeurs et 
superstitions^ pp. 24, 26, 218, 224 fF., 293 ff.; Turner, Samoa, 

PP- 345 ff- 

^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 238-239. 

2^ Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 192, 310. 

22 B. D. Eerdmans, in Expositor, Nov. 1913, p. 197. 



THE DISCARNATE SOUL 177 

of the underworld by attacks upon those left 
on earth.^^ Similarly in New Guinea those 
who die in childbirth, suicides, and those who 
have lost their heads become maleficent.^^ 
The Omahas hold that ghosts of the murdered 
return and inflict punishment by disease, or 
by causing the wind to blow from hunter to 
game and so to spoil his sport. ^^ Among 
Congo cannibals the soul seen in dreams is a 
wandering human spirit aiming at evil in its 
travels, and the witch dodlor may be hired to 
kill it. The nostrils of the dead are plugged 
immediately after death to keep the spirit in 
the body as long as possible.^^ If the ghost is 
for any reason unwelcome in the nether world 
and is driven out, it becomes malicious and 
aims at mischief, either inflidling positive 
ills by sending storms and like disasters or 
preventing success in various pursuits. ^^ In 
some cases ghosts are normally neutral, and 
their disposition and consequent adlions de- 
pend upon the treatment they receive from 

2^ Thomas, Anthropological Report, p. 31. 

2* Frazer, Belief in Immortality, i. 212. 

" Fletcher and La Flesche, 27th Report, p. 215. 

26 Weeks, Congo Cannibals, p. 262. 

" lb., pp. 263-264, 269. 



178 ANIMISM 

the living.^^ So that the well-being of sur- 
vivors depends on propitiation by gifts and 
ceremonies or on manifestations of abiding 
afFedlion.^^ The duties of classic Greeks and 
Romans to their dead — careful and honorable 
burial, celebration by games at the funeral 
or on anniversaries — recur at once to the 
mind: and in these and other matters these 
peoples handed down in memory at least and 
often in ritual the doings and beliefs of far 
away ancestors. Close parallels to classic 
customs have been observed among African, 
Melanesian, and Polynesian peoples, where 
not only is the funeral offering placed on the 
ground, but dramatic performances in honor 
of the dead take place.^° Among some races, 
such as British New Guineans and the Mafulu, 
ghosts are always malevolent.^^ 

Among the exercises of the enlarged powers 

28 Williamson, South Sea Savage, pp. 65, 68, 74, 75, 76, 81 flF.; 
Roscoe, Baganda, pp. 116, 278, 286. 

^ Taplin, Narrinyeriy p. 19; Curr, Australian Race, i. 87; 
Howitt, Native Tribes, pp. 461, 463, 473; Spencer and Gillen, 
Northern Tribes, p. 507, and Native Tribes, p. 511. 

^^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 18; Brown, Melane- 
sians and Polynesians, pp. 214 ff.; Milligan, Fetish Folk, pp. 233- 
236. 

3^ Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 281 and Mafulu Mountain 
People, pp. 243 fF., 266 fF., 297 fF.; JAI, xxviii (1899), 216 flP. 



THE DISCARNATE SOUL 179 

attributed to ghosts by quite diverse peoples 
is one which, as we shall see later, they possess 
in common with non-human spirits. This is 
the inflidlion of disease in an access of malig- 
nancy. Such a belief is held by American 
Indians, South Sea islanders, Hindus, New 
Guineans, and many others. ^^ They may in- 
flidl lockjaw by a blow, cause death, induce 
phthisis, and bring pestilence.^^ Shamans and 
medicine men may use them to secure revenge 
or haunt the living; and this again calls up the 
need for exorcism.^^ This gives rise to various 
devices and taboos, aiming at propitiating or 
deceiving the ghosts, such as change of names 
assigned to things belonging to the dead, or 
dropping out of the language words which 
contained the name borne in life, this going 
so far in some cases as to involve the destruc- 
tion of huts, plantations, trees, and other 
possessions.^^ It is quite in keeping with the 

32 Folk-lore, ii. 420 ff., 431; Kloss, In the AndamanSy p. 305; 
Decle, Three years in Savage Africa, pp. 236, 344. 

^3 Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 230; Weeks, Congo 
Cannibals, p. 266; Roscoe, Baganda, p. 100; Williamson, South 
Sea Savage, pp. 81 fF.; Crooke, Tribes and Castes, iii. 436. 

^ Williamson, South Sea Savage, pp. 81 fF.; Roscoe, Baganda, 
p. 126. 

35 Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 631 flF.; Cambridge Anthropologi- 
cal Expedition, v. 250. 



i8o ANIMISM 

whole conception of things that ghosts should 
be especially dangerous at night. ^^ 

From all this, to anticipate slightly what is 
yet to come, fear of discarnate spirits may 
lead to a cult, a worship, which is apotropaic, 
deprecatory, or propitiatory in character. On 
the other hand, the sense of favors received or 
to come gives the rationale of a cultus which 
embodies more of gratitude and pleasure than 
of fear. With both these varieties of mental 
qualities attributed to ghosts, shared by 
them in common with non-human powers, it 
seems to require somewhat of ingenuity and 
a miscalculation or misappreciation of native 
human traits to force one to derive all worship 
from fear.^^ Timor fecit deos is now hardly 
tenable in its original sense, in view of abun- 
dance of ascertained fadls. Most of the ani- 
mals, especially those domesticated, display 
amiable traits, including gratitude. We can 
hardly hold, therefore, that man, whether the 
produd: of evolution or of special creation, 
developed one of his noblest exercises, that 
of worship, from a sense of fear alone. 

^ Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 64, 147. 

^' Chalmers and Gill, Work and Adventure^ pp. 84 ff. 



XIII 
THE HOME OF THE SOUL 



w 



XIII 
THE HOME OF THE SOUL 

E have seen that to the discarnate 
spirit is attributed much of fondness 
for things to which it had become accustomed 
in its earthly Hfe. The idea of preference or 
liking comes out frequently in connection with 
its post-mortem habitat. Of course, it is to be 
remembered that the eschatology of primitive 
peoples is vague and by no means consistent. 
Indeed, when it is recalled that Christian 
eschatology is still in a confused state, when 
orthodox theologians are at odds as to the 
location of the soul between death and the 
judgment, even as to the time of the judgment, 
whether immediately after death or at some 
indefinitely distant time; when these dodlors 
of the faith disagree as to the conscious 
existence or the ** sleep" of the soul after 
death, as to its removal to heaven or hell on 
dissolution, and whether that heaven or hell 
is final or only temporary — one can hardly 

183 



i84 ANIMISM 

expedl primitive peoples, whose memory for 
history is short and their outlook and forecast 
vague and brief, to have a consecutive and 
sharply defined eschatology. Consequently 
we find variations innumerable in the concep- 
tions of the souFs location, and a sort of 
warfare between the poor ghost's supposed 
preference and the desires of survivors. 

It is quite normal that the spirit is credited 
with lingering afFedlion for the home and the 
environment that so long harbored it, and 
makes the grave, which is, of course, in the 
immediate neighborhood, its favorite haunt 
and the body in the grave still its home. 
How persistent this primitive notion is may 
be verified in almost any rural community, 
where few indeed care to pass God's acre 
after dark without company. The prehistoric 
Mycenaeans left in graves a groove by which 
evidently to pour the oflFerings to the ghosts; 
Egyptian tombs had channels by which ka 
or ha could have access to and egress from 
the embalmed body. Even in Mongolia these 
apertures are found in the graves, though 
there they are placed at the sides, showing 
that they were intended for the spirit's exit 
and entrance and not to facilitate the placing 



THE HOME OF THE SOUL 185 

of provisions — food and drink.^ Many primi- 
tive peoples entertain beliefs parallel to those 
indicated by these customs. Such are African 
tribes like the Baganda, certain Australians, 
and many others.^ From this conception 
may arise the thought that souls wander 
around their old haunts and even make them 
impossible for dwellings, at least for a time; 
or they may frequent places having peculiar 
topographical features, where their clans fore- 
gather.^ Sometimes this return is only 
temporary, limited to certain hours of the 
night, as for example, the case of some African 
ghosts, who are released between twelve and 
three in the morning — remember the ghost 
of Hamlet's father!^ In other cases there is 
alleged to be a time when the ghosts must 
quit finally their earthly haunts for a perma- 
nent abode elsewhere. Thus in New Guinea 
"it seems that the spirit does not find its way 
at once to its home; but wanders for some 

1 NGMy May 1913, p. 65. 

2 Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 282 fF.; Howitt, Native Tribes 
S. E. Australiaj pp. 434, 438-439, 455, 470; Talbot, In the 
Shadow of the Bush, p. 232. 

' Taplin, Narrinyeri, pp. 181 fF.; Thomas, Report, p. 38; 
Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 76; Spencer and Gillen, Native 
Tribes, pp. 123, 126. 

* Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 232. 



i86 ANIMISM 

time about the places it was familiar with 
during the period it was connedled with the 
body. It may be possible that the spirit does 
not finally leave its own haunts until the 
death feasts are finished, or at least that the 
people beheve the spirit may be about, and 
likely to injure them, until they think a 
sufficient time has elapsed, and a sufficient 
number of death feasts have been held, and 
that then it is safe to close the series, to 
remove the tabu, and to give over the mourn- 
ing." ' 

There is, however, in this conception left 
open the possibility of securing a brief visit 
from them for purposes that are supposed to 
serve the living. How easily out of this could 
develop the idea and practice of necromancy! 

On the other hand one may support with 
abundant evidence the thesis that there is a 
quite general consensus to the effed: that it is 
unseemly for departed spirits to inhabit the 
land where the living pass their earthly 
existence. It is widely believed that ghosts 
have their own land whither living mortals 
may not go, whence, also, spirits may not 

^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 220; cf. Neuhass, Deutsch 
Neu-Guinea, iii. 149 fF. 



THE HOME OF THE SOUL 187 

usually return, unless under highly exceptional 
circumstances. Still it must not be forgotten 
that a whole group of festivals and a host of 
folk customs, centering in mid-winter for the 
most part, have as their basis the idea that 
ghosts return annually and must be treated 
with resped, kindness, and hospitality. All 
Souls' Day is the survival in Christian custom 
of this belief.^ 

To the questions where and what the region 
of the dead is many tribes give various 
answers. Naturally man's wildest flights of 
imagination and fancy have played with this 
theme. Of course, much depends, in the 
answer that is given by any particular group 
of peoples, upon the geography of the region 
and the cosmography of the group. It is 
most natural, from the usual custom of burial, 
that a region beneath the earth should be in 
the thoughts of very diverse tribes and nations. 
There was placed the Babylonian "Land- 
of-no-Return,'' for the most part the Egyptian 
home of the dead, the Greek Hades, the 
resting place of natives of Hood Peninsula 
and other places in New Guinea, in Oceanica 

^ For convenient collections of cases, cf. Harrison, Prolegomena, 
passim, and Miles, Christmas, pp. i6i ff. 



i88 ANIMISM 

(Samoa) — to name only a few representative 
peoples^ On the other hand, it frequently 
happens that the place of souls is otherwise 
located: on a distant mountain, as with some 
natives of British New Guinea; ^ or where the 
sun sets (compare Egyptian ideas); or on an 
island far away;^ or under the sea;^° or in the 
heavens, either in some definitely designated 
luminary or in some indefinite locality (Omahas 
regard the Milky Way as the path to this 
home by which spirits pass in turn to and 
through seven spirit worlds). ^^ At times the 
information is quite definite, as for example in 
parts of New Guinea. 

"About Wedau and Wamira the spirits 
of the dead go eventually to some place to 
the eastward of Cape Frere, in a valley in 
the mountains called lola, the approach to the 
abode of the spirits being through a hole 
in the ground. When the spirit arrives it 
is questioned at once, 'Where have you come 

^ JAI, xxviii (1899), 216 ff.; Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guineat 
Hi. 149 fF.; Westervelt, Legends of Maui, p. 129. 

* Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 192. 

^ Westervelt, Legends of Maui, pp. 129 ff.; Codrington, M^r/aw^ 
sians, pp. 255 ff.; Frazer, Immortality, p. 192. 

^° Lambert, Mceurs et superstitions, pp. 13 ff.; Seligmann, 
Melanesians, pp. 655 ff.; Turner, Samoa, pp. 257-258. 

" Fletcher and La Flesche, lyth Report, etc., pp. 588-589. 



THE HOME OF THE SOUL 189 

from?' *What have you come for?' just as 
every time you go into a village every one 
you meet asks you, * Where are you going?' 
'What are you after?' The newly arrived one 
says, *I have come from Wedau' or *Wamira,' 
as the case may be, or the answer may state 
more explicitly the sedlion of the village, and 
'Where else should I go except to my own 
people?' Then the question is asked, *Who 
sent you?' and for answer the name of some 
sorcerer or witch is given, the one responsible 
for the death. The spirit is admitted to its 
new home, where it finds feasting and danc- 
ing, plenty of food, and apparently also some 
fighting, and should the spirit be killed, as 
some seem to think possible, during such fight- 
ing, then it is the end, there is no more life 
of such." ^2 

It would be expeded that ideas differ 
greatly as to the character of the spirit world. 
A wide group of unrelated peoples have looked 
on the place of the soul as melancholy and 
mournful, fitting the soul's unsubstantial char- 
acter. The saying of Hezekiah, king of Israel, 
after he had recovered from a dangerous 
illness, here leaps into the mind: 

*2 Newton, In Far New Guinea^ p. 219. 



I90 ANIMISM 

^^ For the grave cannot praise thee, death 

cannot celebrate thee: 
They that go down into the pit cannot hope for 

thy truth. 
The living, the living, he shall praise thee, 
As I do this day. '"^^ 

Such were the conceptions of Babylonians, 
Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. A noted 
Greek hero is made to declare that he would 
rather be a lowly laborer on earth than have an 
exalted station among the dead. Adversely 
to this, not a few peoples patterned their 
ideas of future life on the present world. 
Such is the content of the notion in cases 
already cited ^^ where primitive tribes mutilated 
foes to prevent the shades frorh taking revenge 
in the other world. And in many other 
instances the imagination has compassed only 
similar conceptions.^^ The Thay of Indo- 
China look on the next life as the counterpart 
of this.^^ The African Bakongo bury their 
dead late in the day so that the spirits may 

13 Isa. 38: 18-19. 
" Above, pp. 166 fF. 

1^ Lambert, Mceurs et superstitions, pp. 13 fF.; Seligmann, 
Melanesians, pp. 655 ff.; Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 208. 
1^ Anthropos, n (1907), 619. 



THE HOME OF THE SOUL 191 

arrive when the ghosts who preceded the 
present dead are home from their labor in 
the fields and may welcome the newcomer.^"^ 
Other Africans know of ghost towns where 
the dead live and congregate as they did 
while on earth. ^^ The Hausa ghosts have a 
city of their own, which has at least once been 
seen by a man who returned to tell the tale. 
A traveler saw four caravans crossing the 
desert in different directions, and followed 
one which seemed to him best. Suddenly he 
saw the ghost city in front of him, and in 
some way became cognizant of its nature. 
He hurriedly turned about and escaped. This 
was almost miraculous, for the spirits summon 
travelers from a caravan, and he who follows 
them to the ghost city never returns. ^^ The 
ancient Egyptians conceived the land of the 
departed and their life as duplicating under 
happier conditions life on the Nile; indeed 
there was a celestial Nile land, where the 
social conditions which environed life on earth 
continued, even to the institution of slavery 
and subjecftion of the peasant to the noble. 
And exa(5lly on a par with this state of ex- 

^^ Weeks, Primitive BakongOy p. 270. 

^^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, passim. 

^^ Tremearne, Ban of the Bori^ pp. 155-156. 



192 ANIMISM 

pedlation is the set of ideas regarding the 
** other side" entertained by South Sea people.^^ 
The custom in old Egypt, Japan, and else- 
where, and in modern Africa, of slaughtering 
wives, servants, slaves, and cattle to provide 
a retinue and a living for the dead in the spirit 
world is too well known to need substantiation 
here. We have already had before us^^ the 
curious custom of providing Ushabtiu in 
Egypt, and have seen the record of the institu- 
tion of a similar custom in Japan, while the 
explanation given in China and Korea of the 
figures around the grave-mounds in those 
countries has also been cited. We have to 
remember in taking note of these customs in 
the Far East that the pradlice of magic there 
has for ages been almost as common and as 
inveterate as in Egypt. 

We may further note that in parts of Fiji 
and New Guinea the souls of the departed 
are supposed to dwell in a great community, 
and the puberty ceremonies are by some 
construed as having reference to introduction 
to ancestral spirits in preparation for final 
union with them.^^ 

^ Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 75. 

21 Above, pp. 130 fF. 

22 Frazer, Belief in Immortality, i. 434. 



THE HOME OF THE SOUL 193 

In some regions the golden age of man is 
placed beyond the grave. Some British New 
Guinea tribes think of the future Hfe as a 
paradise, with no old age, sickness, crime, 
fighting, death, or evil spirits; where first 
marriages are reestablished and children are 
born who reach maturity and maintain that 
condition with unabated strength and virility; 
and so it is with other South Sea islanders.^^ 

The means of approach to this final abode 
varies, of course, with the grade of civilization, 
the location of the soul's home, and many 
other circumstances usually dependent on 
local conditions. If the home is on an island 
or across a river, a ferry may be conceived — 
thus Melanesians reproduce in part the ideas 
of the Greeks with their Charon and the Styx.^^ 
Others conceive the entrance to be through 
well-known caves or holes, and exploration 
of these by the reckless or foolhardy is dis- 
couraged by the belief that attempts at 
entrance will be punished by severe earth- 
quakes.^^ Or a chasm is believed to separate 

'^ Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, pp. 443 fF.; Frazer, 
Belief in Immortality, \. 192; Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 192. 

^ Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 255 fF. 

^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 219; Turner, Samoa, 
pp. 257-258. 



194 ANIMISM 

the two worlds, spanned by a tree trunk, as 
among American Indians or some Melanesians 
(the latter must carry the figure of a frigate 
bird to ensure safe passage),^^ or with a higher 
development of culture the tree trunk becomes 
a bridge, the chasm hell, and the passage the 
trial of the soul. 

While by far the preponderating beHef 
among primitive peoples is that the dead, 
especially their ghosts, are to be gotten out of 
the way, and while the general feehng is one 
of fear, in occasional situations an enduring 
connection with them is desired, and especial 
efforts are made to bring this about. Thus 
some peoples in Africa, where nearly all 
shades of primitive thought may be discovered, 
are so anxious to secure this abiding presence 
of their dead that they cut off the head of 
the deceased and preserve it in the home. 
This is thought to secure the continuance of 
the presence of the favor of the dead patron, 
as he now becomes by this means. ^^ 

^ Codrington, Melanesians, p. 257. 
27 Frobenius, Voice of Africay p. 674. 



XIV 

DESCENSUS AVERNI 



XIV 

DESCENSUS AVERNI 

' I ^HE notion of the underworld as a prison 
-■- place in which the dead are confined 
has given rise in many different centers to the 
thought of some daring mortal who breaks the 
law separating the two worlds, and visits 
the home of the dead, winning through by- 
power of love, or sheer bravado and physical 
might or challenge, or by favor of the gods. 
The Descensus Averni is a widespread myth. 
Its earliest literary form meets us in pre- 
Semitic Babylonia in the story of Tammuz 
and Ishtar — now so well known that no 
extended narrative is here necessary.^ A fairly 
close parallel to the Ishtar episode is found in 
far-away Japan, where the goddess Izanami 
died and her spouse Izanagi descended after 
her, broke the taboo concerning preservation 
of darkness (which is an element in so many 
cycles of folklore unconnected with the Descen- 

* For the story, see most conveniently Rogers, Cuneiform 
Parallelsy pp. 121-131. 

197 



198 ANIMISM 

sus), and with difficulty escaped to the upper 
air, pursued by the revengeful goddess and 
her minions.2 The retirement of the love- 
goddess Ishtar in Babylonia to the underworld 
is also paralleled by that of the sun-goddess in 
Japan, though it is "the rock-cave of heaven" 
in which the latter hides herself, and so brings 
darkness, as the absence of Ishtar brings lack 
of desire, on earth.^ Hercules' famous exploit 
of descending and haling Cerberus, the snake- 
haired dog guardian of the shades who would 
fain return, to the upper air is in keeping with 
the hero's hardy and daring nature. The 
Babylonians having conceived so early the 
notion, it is not to be wondered at that the 
Mandaeans, who took over so much of Baby- 
lonian custom and mythology, should take 
over in the descensus Averni the exploit of 
Manda-da hayye.^ Of course the Vergilian 
story of u^neas' descent at once recurs to the 
mind, as well as that of Vergil's imitator and 
disciple Dante. 

But the idea is not confined to peoples so 
far along in culture. Maui, the culture hero 
of New Zealand and the South Sea, made the 
dread journey to meet his great ancestress — 

2 Aston, ShintOi p. 93. » Ib.y p. 100. * NSH.y vii. 147. 



DESCENSUS JFERNI 199 

the lure here was merely material, a fish hook 
and to get fire.^ The Etoi, a people of Africa, 
know of the same venturous enterprise with 
the taboo of eating ghost food, which connedls 
the story in thought, though hardly in origin, 
with the Greek myth of the ravished Per- 
sephone, and with a story of quite different 
purport in Babylonia.^ Among some New 
Guinean peoples there are chosen mortals that 
make the journey and return in safety^ 
Omaha Indians regard it as possible for the 
living, in a swoon, to visit the dread regions 
of the dead and return unscathed.* But these 
are the exceptions, and only heroes and gods, 
and even they under specially favoring aus- 
pices, like the command, behest, or permission 
of the chief god, visit the dead and are able to 
reascend from "The Land of No-Return." 

^ Westervelt, Legends of Maui, pp. 23, 48, 68 ff. 
^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 240, 336. 
' Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 655 ff. 
* Fletcher and La Flesche, 27th Report, etc., p. 589. 



XV 
WORSHIP 



XV 

WORSHIP 

T TOWEVER worship be defined, little 
^ -*- reflection is needed to discern the basis 
of its beginnings in what has preceded. Wor- 
ship implies in the worshiper fear, reverence, 
gratitude, veneration, homage, love, respedl, 
admiration, or a complex of some or all of 
these; and in the objedl worshiped power, 
worth, or dignity, or a complex of them. 
As we moderns know it, and as the world has 
known it as far back as written traditions or 
remains of various sorts permit investigation, 
worship involves certain definite modes of 
adlion by worshipers, diredled to or at the 
objecfl of worship; and these modes of adion 
tend to become stereotyped, or, to anticipate 
a little, to crystallize into ritual. And many 
reasons lead to the belief that this stereotyping 
began very early. 

Man's conception of things being anthropo- 
pathic, he would regard them as he did men, 
203 



204 ANIMISM 

and in addition he would treat them, so far 
as circumstances and the nature of the case 
permitted, much as he did men. Since he 
thought of them as having senses to be 
tickled, appetites to be gratified, mentality to 
be reckoned with, temper to be made or kept 
placid and amicable, and power to be turned 
to good account or at least to be prevented 
from adling against him, he would deal with 
them as his experience and observation had 
taught him his own kind liked to be treated, 
and thus secure his own well-being. It could 
not have been long before the social element 
entered, tradition as to methods of accom- 
plishing ends soon becoming a determining 
fad:or. Man had already discovered that 
the individuals of his own species differed 
greatly in qualities and power, and that 
different modes of procedure were either 
politic or necessary. Those weaker or less 
cunning than himself he could either disregard 
or render subservient. Those stronger and 
more resourceful would evoke fear or win 
respedl, and to them he would concede what 
he must. The degree of respedl or fear, ex- 
pressed in terms of tribute or homage, would 
depend upon the conceived or adlual disparity 



WORSHIP 20S 

between his powers and those of the others. 
How short a distance separates respedl or 
homage from worship becomes evident when 
one considers the refinement in theology of 
the distinction of dulia, hyperdulia, and latria 
from each other, or when one notes the diffi- 
culty of distinguishing the results in the 
objedlive adlions attending "veneration," 
"higher veneration," and "worship." ^ This 
same standard of adlion would apply to what- 
ever grade or order of beings man acflually 
dealt with or conceived himself as dealing 
with. As Professor King puts it: 

"Granted that the idea of a superior per- 
sonality once appears in the religious con- 
sciousness, it is easy to see that the problem 
of worship itself, and of different types of 
worship, is quite a simple one. It seems 
almost self-evident that the deity will be 
approached and treated precisely along the 
lines of intercourse within the group of wor- 
shipers. He will be bargained with, or 
treated with respedl, because he is recognized 
as having the advantage in power. He will 
be flattered, offered gifts, feasted, and treated 
precisely as would occur in a human society 

1 Cf.iVS^., article "Dulia." 



2o6 ANIMISM 

if any member were felt to surpass the rest in 
some important type of excellence. In general, 
the modes of worship will be, first of all, 
repetitions of the acfis called forth by the 
objedl or situation which has aroused the 
interest. In what better way could keepers 
of flocks conceive of honoring their god and 
keeping him interested in men than by the 
ordinary communal feast, of recognized im- 
portance in maintaining proper social relations 
on the human side? The peoples with whom 
witchcraft is of dominating importance will 
necessarily treat their deities after the manner 
of treating the human sorcerer.'* ^ 

The expression of animistic thought in this 
relation is that what is pleasing to the wor- 
shiper will be regarded as pleasing to the 
objedt of devotion; what would efFed the 
purpose in mind if applied to the subjedt is 
considered efFedlual applied to the objedt.' 

Most likely the impression upon man most 
nearly (if not quite) universal made by any 
given objedl was that of relative power. 
The question that would then arise would be: 
Is this being favorable to me or adverse? 

^ King, Development of Religiofty p. 257. 

* Cf, Carpenter, Comparative Religion^ p. 14. 



WORSHIP 207 

Will it use its power to help or hinder or 
injure? If the conception was that the objedl 
was propitious, gratitude, warming in time 
and with the supposed or real repetition of 
favors (again real or supposed) into resped:, 
love, and admiration, would evoke homage or 
worship in its essential even though crude 
elements. If the objed: was conceived to be 
malign in disposition, the endeavor would 
naturally follow either to overawe or to 
propitiate. It would not take very long to 
discern here how magic in some of its aspedls 
could arise. Threat or magic would be em- 
ployed, in course of time, to overawe; on the 
other hand, blandishments of various sorts 
would be used to conciliate; or apotropaic 
performances might grow up to drive and 
keep away the power conceived as hostile, to 
prevent it from accomplishing ends unwelcome 
to man. Variety in treatment must have 
arisen from the supposition that there were 
grades of being and differences of disposition 
among these beings. Just as some men were 
more powerful in physique or resourceful in 
wiles, so with these other beings with whom 
man supposed himself in contad. That differ- 
ent kinds of power were conceived as existing 



2o8 ANIMISM 

in the many spirits which man thought he 
perceived in his world is in the very forefront 
of the phenomena we have passed in review. 

In what has preceded there is implicit an 
assumption that is not difficult to establish. 
This is that man's relation to beings other 
than himself was to a large extent, if not 
entirely, egoistic. He was concerned with 
what contributed to his own well-being as he 
understood it. Not overlooked here is the 
later stage when gens and tribe have entered 
with their idea of solidarity, in which the 
individual was to a certain extent submerged 
and so far extinguished. In this stage, indeed, 
the acftions of the one, under penalty of his 
clan's displeasure or worse, were made to 
contribute to the weal of the whole, or, at 
the very least, to be devoid of harm or danger 
to it. Prior to this grade of culture — if 
psychology tell true its tale — the needs of 
self alone furnished the criterion of adlion, 
self including doubtless also family. And 
when the individual self was merged in the 
clan self, when the good of one was the good 
of all, and vice versa, the test of egoism, though 
now a better and larger quantity, still ruled. 
Dealings with not-man, as with man, con- 



WORSHIP 209 

cerned the affairs of everyday life, were a 
matter of barter and exchange between man 
and the others. Two passages from the 
Hebrew scriptures here leap into the mind. 
Jacob (Gen. 28 : 20-22) promises devotion to 
God on condition of receiving a certain con- 
tinuing favor. The reverse of this picfture 
appears in Deut. 28, where in return for 
definite religious performance prosperity is 
assured the people by their God. Philos- 
tratus makes Apollonius of Tyana declare 
that worship and sacrifice and the like are but 
a quid pro quo, human in its formulation. 
Indeed, Apollonius thought that large offerings 
made before any benefit was received from 
the god were suspicious, arguing guilt in the 
sacrificer and an attempt at bribery of the 
deity.^ Such a condition as the understanding 
between mortal and deity, the driving of 
bargain with the god, can be ascertained as 
occurring all through history. Only late does 
altruism appear and thenceforth struggle for 
expression against odds. 

Our chief concern here is to note the fad: 
most pertinent to our line of investigation and 
implicit in the foregoing — that worship as 
* Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, i. x. 



210 ANIMISM 

registered by history and observation is most 
easily accounted for on an animistic basis. 
Worship, if our hypothesis be true, is but the 
sublimation (at first only slight) of sentiments 
that are wholly native to man's nature from 
the start. The difference in degree or intensity 
corresponds to the conceived difference in 
certain qualities found in the objedl. The 
higher worthfulness or helpfulness or potency 
found or conceived in an objedl commanded 
that initial stage of tribute, higher than was 
yielded to others, which developed in the course 
of time — how limited or extended we cannot 
tell — into what would now be conceded to be 
essentially worship. 

Incidentally in the preceding discussion the 
fadl has come out that man worshiped what 
we call inanimate objedls in nature (stones, 
mountains, rivers, seas, the luminaries, the 
sky, the earth, and the like); individuals in 
the vegetable kingdom (the sacred tree, for 
example, indigenous in nearly all lands but 
necessarily varying in species with the latitude 
and longitude); others from the animal king- 
dom (snakes and monkeys and what not); 
imaginary beings good and bad, maHgn and 
benign; as well as living men and the souls of 



WORSHIP 111 

the departed. We trace to animism the 
varied cults that have engaged the soul and 
spirit of man throughout time and all over 
the world. Idolatry in all its varieties and 
in the numerous connotations of the word 
needs little other explanation of its origin. 
Worship springs out of man's nature along 
with his efforts to satisfy his varied appetites 
of soul and body, and is formulated on the 
basis of his real or supposed experiences. To 
use a word that sums up luminously the 
entire situation, man is incorrigibly theo- 
tropic, his thoughts have ever turned God ward. 
The element that was lacking was judgment 
of the things he chose as objedls of service, 
perception of what was worthy of adoration, 
realization of a true standard of values. 

It is not our purpose to trace in minutiae 
the development of cult. We are concerned 
here solely with the phenomenology and 
implications of animism, not with the unfolding 
of all that results. It would indeed be inter- 
esting to follow out the complexity of cult, 
to show how it came to cover so large a portion 
of life, unfolding into exadling ritual, and 
embracing alike the insignificant details and 
the momentous crises of existence. We should 



212 ANIMISM 

find fascinating the testimonies alike to com- 
mon psychological trends — as in the almost 
universal cult of the serpent, easily inter- 
preted upon physical grounds — and to racial 
peculiarities which led to specific contributions 
which enriched later humanity, such as the 
Greek devotion to the beautiful and the 
Roman passion for legal formulation. But 
this belongs to a different line of discussion. 

We must, however, glance at two elements 
in the case — conservatism and the social 
fadlor. 

By the first is meant that fear to change 
methods and formulae (whether of words or of 
adlion) which, however wrongly (because of 
man's major fallacy, post hoc propter hoc), 
were supposed to have efficacy. For the 
existence of this there is abundant testimony. 
From all quarters to observers of procedure 
which to them, in their advanced stage of 
culture, seems inherently irrational, who ask: 
Why do you do this.? or. Why do you do it 
this way ? the almost invariable answer comes. 
Our fathers taught us to do it. Often there 
is attached a further reason, clearly mytho- 
logical or else supported by some supposedly 
conclusive proof from experience, such as : If 



WORSHIP 213 

we did not, this or that dreadful thing would 
happen just as it did to so and so who did it 
another way or did not do it at all. In Nias 
(Malaysia) in case of epidemic the cause is 
often found in a desertion of the old ways, 
and a renewal of vows to return to the earlier 
order of things is believed to remove the 
trouble.^ Among the Pueblos the working 
of this principle has been observed. 

**'0f the two great forces which have lifted 
humanity to the present plane of civilization 
— imitation and invention — the latter has 
been almost wholly suppressed by the 
Pueblos.' ^ The result is exact reproduction 
in both industry and religion." ^ 

And Todd's testimony is given again as fol- 
lows: "Oral traditions and the * customs that 
are written within the book' . . . form the 
social matrix and make up by far the larger 
part of that social heredity which is the very 
stuff of informal education, and the basis of 
formal pedagogy." ^ From a different branch 
of the American aborigines evidence of the ap- 

^ Frazer, Scapegoat, p. 115. 

^ Spencer, Education of the Pueblo Child. 

"^ Todd, The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, p. 

183- 

* Todd, Primitive Family, p. 17S. 



214 ANIMISM 

plication of this principle to ritual is given as 
follows: "Any mistake made in singing these 
(ritual) songs or in reciting the ritual (of the 
Omahas) resulted in the early death of the 
offender." » 

The continuity of this extreme conservatism 
can be traced in the area of ritual down to our 
own times. Indeed it has become an axiom 
among investigators both of religion and of 
anthropology and folk-lore that the oldest 
living remains we have are to be found in 
ritual, whether of worship, work, or, strange 
to say, play. The Brahmins have enshrined 
in their writings the necessity of adhering with 
the utmost fidelity to the words and adls, and 
the very sequence of the same, to the end that 
the sacrifice may be efFedlual. It is a matter 
of history that Sumerian rituals which began 
to be formulated in Babylonia perhaps as 
early as the sixth or fifth millennium before 
Christ were employed for a thousand or more 
years after the Sumerian language had ceased 
to be spoken, and this in order to gain effec- 
tual approach to the gods. Several branches 
of the Christian Church still employ languages 
long defundl and unintelHgible to the majority 

• Fletcher and La Flesche, Anthropological ReporU etc., p. 575. 



WORSHIP 215 

of the worshipers, and this is done for no 
reason that is intelligible, or at least plausible, 
to those not of the communions referred to. 
Only a few years ago intense feeling was 
caused in Greece over the proposed rendering 
of the Greek of the New Testament into 
modern Greek. In various other ways might 
be demonstrated the tendency to a fixity in 
ways of thinking about things, in modes of 
adlion, and in methods of expression, and all 
this as a charadleristic native to man in all 
stages of civilization and in all spheres of 
adlion. 

The second element includes the complex 
results of many minds working on the same 
problem. An ever stronger emphasis upon 
the formative influence of the social facflor in 
the development of mankind is laid by modern 
investigators in anthropology and religion. 
One way in which communal life worked was 
the observation of details, supposed to be of 
significance, which might or did escape the 
notice of individuals. A gesture in a dance, 
a chance occurrence in a ceremony, mere 
coincidence in some totally unrelated phe- 
nomena such as the presence of a variegated 
leaf or the simultaneous note of a bird or leap 



2i6 ANIMISM 

of an insedl — any of these or a thousand 
other details marked at the time might come 
to be considered essential parts or accom- 
paniments of the performance, whatever it 
was, thereafter to be included or simulated 
whenever the results were sought again, with 
the assumption that omission imperilled those 
results. Here is one partial explanation of 
the growing complexity of ceremonial up to a 
certain point. It can be seen at once how 
conservatism steps in here to preserve the 
method of procedure thus arrived at. 

But this social fadlor undoubtedly operated 
also in a different way. The ways of seeing 
and interpreting things differ among observers. 
Man is an argumentative animal. Opinions 
pro and contra passed, and one consequence 
must have been a series of compromises in 
which weight of opinion or authority produced 
finally the formulae and methods most accept- 
able to the community. Here is one door by 
which probably entered what we know as 
progress. The interest of the community, 
clan, or tribe, we have seen, operated to 
restrid: and limit individual choice and initia- 
tive. Society did at a certain stage, and 
perhaps much earlier than any period of 



WORSHIP 217 

which we have diredl evidence, regard itself 
as open to readlions from benefit or injury 
done to non-human beings through the agency 
of any one of its members. This being so, 
the individual must adl with reference to the 
welfare of the whole. It is at this point per- 
tinent therefore to point to the entrance of 
the ethical as distindl from what has so long 
been regarded as the religious. To examine 
this, however, would take us away from our 
theme, as it belongs in an entirely different 
field from that we now cultivate. 



XVI 
RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 



XVI 

RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 

TT^INALLY, we may register — no more 
^ than that — a few of the behefs and 
pracflices which, enduring through ages, were 
the diredl legacy or proximate produdl of the 
animistic stage. 

First, of course, is the precious discovery of 
the existence of soul in man, an inheritance 
whose value has been ever more clearly 
recognized as the centuries rolled by, until the 
supreme expression of that value was given 
by Jesus of Nazareth: What shall it profit 
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul? The growing perception of the 
souFs worth is measured in part by the devel- 
opment of the ideas of heaven and hell as that 
soul's reward or punishment. Anticipated 
bliss or sorrow was magnified in proportion to 
the enlarging estimates of the souFs worth. 
The Greek idea of a shadowy existence after 
death in a featureless place that almost voids 
the idea of locality could not abide with a 

221 



222 ANIMISM 

higher (Christian) estimate of soul values. 
Even the Egyptians had a nobler realization 
of those values, though it was nourished at 
great loss — it cost them a really noble con- 
ception of the being and nature of the gods. 

Second, this conception of the soul thus 
recognized involves another noteworthy be- 
quest of animism, the notion of the continued 
life of the soul beyond the grave. Primitive 
races are quite logical in their deduction of 
continued existence as an attribute or quality 
of soul. It has incidentally been noted in the 
preceding pages that whatever was conceived 
as possessing soul was also believed to exist 
beyond the grave. There the hunter, note, 
was conceived to pursue shade of deer or 
whatever animal had been the gain of his bow 
or spear in this life. So that it was not man 
in himself, apart from soul, that gained im- 
mortality — or whatever proportion of immor- 
tality the primitive had acquired the power to 
conceive — immortality belonged to soul itself. 

If pradical universaHty of belief and of 
desire for the thing itself proves a dodlrine, 
no tenet of our faith has surer basis than this 
in existence after death. We have already 
seen that the idea of continuance, which is 



RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 223 

the seed out of which the idea of real im- 
mortality germinated, is found among all 
primitive peoples. Moreover, all great reli- 
gions but one have taken the idea into their 
bosoms and made it central. The exception 
is classic Buddhism. And the vigor and 
tenacity of the dodlrine of conscious life 
beyond the grave has been too great for the 
later followers of even the Buddha. For later 
Buddhism too has its dodlrine of heaven and 
hell in the forms of belief current for many 
centuries. Not even the dodlrine of karma, 
in its most absolute form, could withstand the 
ardent longing of man and his invincible faith 
that he is more than a bundle of conse- 
quences to fall apart and cease to exist as an 
entity when once he had persuaded himself 
that such an efFedl was possible. Elsewhere 
than in Buddhism only sporadic agnostics 
have ventured a doubt or a denial of the 
dodlrine. How insistent is the cry of humanity 
for the boon of a continued conscious endurance 
is evinced by this. In spite of the firm faith 
of Christians in immortality, the assurance 
of it (as it is sometimes expressed), this 
longing and this faith compel even them to 
look with desire upon results of investigations 



224 ANIMISM 

like those of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search, if perchance scientific demonstration 
can be made to confirm what is now the 
produc5l of belief. 

The third legacy of animism is belief in 
superhuman powers. Whether we regard this 
from the standpoint of anthropology or culture, 
or from that of ethics or of rehgion, it is 
difficult to estimate, impossible to overesti- 
mate, its importance. How vast a power of 
restraint this belief has exerted as an inhibition 
upon the lower passions of man, and how 
great an impulse it has ever been to the growth 
and unfolding of his higher nature! While it 
is probably true that altruism has never in 
the history of the race been absent in at least 
germinal force — remember that it is not 
absent in even brute creation — even yet its 
greatest force as a determinative fadlor is 
manifested only in the highly cultured. The 
impression of the existence of higher powers, 
of superhuman or supernal forces, was neces- 
sary during the disciplinary or elementary 
stages of culture to control and to diredl to 
beneficent ends human thinking and adion. 
Moreover, as has already been suggested, 
angelology and demonology are traceable in 



RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 225 

dired: line to the set of conceptions we have 
been following in their manifestations in 
thought and adlion. 

For these three greatest conceptions enter- 
tained by humanity the race has to thank 
the stage of culture we have been studying. 

Besides the currents represented by the 
dominant ideas just particularized other 
thought channels exist in which flow streams 
so strong as to warrant the use of the term 
"instindlive." "Fm afraid to go home in the 
dark," for instance, is the voicing of a dread 
from which few are free. Granted that in 
many or most cases this fear is implanted in 
the young by tales of bogies or spirits told by 
injudicious parents or other associates, the 
psychologist can but note how readily the 
idea is assimilated and how difficult it is, even 
for the mature scientist (if he be frank with 
himself), to rise superior to the fear and to 
banish it utterly. The reason is, probably, 
that the mind is in this matter super-receptive. 
The channel has been worn in the thinking or 
emotions of hundreds of ancestors, and the 
grooves are transmitted. Open the sluice 
gates to the idea, and it flows a muddy stream 
through life. 



226 ANIMISM 

The savage of the stone age, cowering over 
his campfire, casting fearful looks into the 
jungle all about him, hearing in "the thousand 
noises of the night the movements of myriads 
of spirits whose existence is to him a reality," 
transmitted a frightful heritage of terror to 
his far-off descendants. Against the efFedls 
of this heritage in the clear light of day and 
the illumination of science and knowledge 
men count themselves vicflors. But curiously 
the shades of night banish self-acquired knowl- 
edge, and the unknown and unseen open the 
gates of emotion to unspoken and unconfessed 
fears. In vain does the vidlim appeal to his 
own "common sense." He knows the "super- 
stition" is "foolish," "unscientific." But the 
subconscious habit of thought, prenatally trans- 
mitted, smothers his knowledge, and, given 
the occasion and stimulus, dominates him in 
spite of himself. 

From the standpoint of pedagogics not yet 
has sufficient allowance been made for this 
heritage of fear. Parents, nurses, and com- 
panions, mistakenly and often innocently, 
sow and cultivate these weeds in a soil all too 
well prepared by heritage. And the result is 
that instead of a beautiful garden spot of 



RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 227 

trust and confidence and belief in the good, a 
jungle or morass of noxious fears and dreads 
mars for many the beauty of life. 

Other residua less worthy, for the most 
part now happily matters of history, at least 
in the civilized world, have been hinted at in 
the preceding pages. Most of these may be 
classed under the head of superstitions, though 
we are to bear in mind that these too have, at 
least some of them, contributed to the advance 
of mankind.^ They include the development 
and prad:ice of totemism and taboo, of magic 
and divination with their nobler brother 
prophecy, of mythology and witchcraft, and 
of sacrifice in the ritual sense. When we have 
shown the nature of animism, we have laid at 
least one firm platform for the treatment of 
these, so far at least as their objective side is 
concerned. Then, too, the relative order or 
the contemporaneity of magic and religion — 
that vexed question — may receive illumina- 
tion in pursuit of the consequences of the 
facfts here exhibited. But to trace these 
developments is another task. Whether such 
phenomena as those of fetishism are primary 

* Cf. Frazer, Psychis Task; and NSH., article "Supersti- 
tion." 



228 ANIMISM 

or secondary may also be possible of solution 
in the light we have gained; and the varieties 
of sacrifice fall easily into order as we start 
from its foundation in animism as shown in 
the fadls here passed in review. 



XVII 

LITERATURE TO WHICH REFERENCE 
IS MADE IN THIS VOLUME 



PERIODICALS AND ABBREVIA- 
TIONS USED 

BW = Biblical World, 

FL = Folk-lore. 

FR = Fortnightly Review, 

Gl = Globus, 

ERE = Hastings, Selbie, and Gray, Ency- 
clopedia of Religion and Ethics, 

HR = Homiletic Review, 

I A = Indian Antiquary. 

lAE = Internationales Archiv jur Ethno- 
graphie. 

JAI = Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 

JRP = Journal of Religious Psychology, 

NGM = National Geographic Magazine, 

NSH = New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, 



XVII 

LITERATURE TO WHICH REFERENCE 
IS MADE IN THIS VOLUME 

V Allen, Grant, Evolution of the Idea of God, 

London, 1897. 
American Ethnology, Annual Reports of Bureau 

of, Washington, various years. 
Anthropological Essays Presented to Sir E, B. 

Tylor, Oxford, 1908. 
Arctander, J. W., Apostle of Alaska, New 

York, 1909. 
Aston, W. G., Shinto, London, 1905. 
Batchelor, J., The Ainu and their Folklore, 

London, 1901. 
Bernau, J. H., Missionary Labours in British 

Guinea, London, 1847. 
Blakeslee, G. H., Japan and Japanese- 
American Relations, New York, 191 2. 
Brett, W. H., Indian Tribes of Guiana, New 

York, 1852, London, 1868. 

V Bros, A., La Religion des peuples non-civilises, 

Paris, 1907. 

231 



232 ANIMISM 

Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, London, 
1910. 

Brugsch, H. K., Religion und Mythologie der 
alien Aegypter, Leipzig, 1891. 

Budge, E. A. W., Osiris and the Egyptian 
Resurrection, New York, 191 1. 

Burton, R. F., Wit and Wisdom from West 
Africa, London, 1863. 

Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres 
Straits, Cambridge, 1907. 

Carpenter, J. E., Comparative Religion, Lon- 
don and New York, 191 3. 

Carruthers, D., Unknown Mongolia: A 
Record of Travel and Exploration on Russo- 
Chinese Borderlands, Philadelphia, 1914. 

Chalmers, J. and Gill, W. W., Work and 
Adventure in New Guinea, London, 1885. 

Charlevoix, Journal d'un voyage dans V Ame^ 
rique septentrionale, Paris, 1744. 

Clodd, Tom Tit Tot, London, 1898. 

Clodd, Animism, London, 1905. 
'C^ooK, A. B., Zeus, A Study in Ancient Religion, 
Cambridge, 1914. 

Cox, M. R., Introduction to Folk-lore, London 
and New York, 1895, new ed., 1904. 

Crooke, W., Tribes and Castes of the North- 
western Provinces, 3 vols., Calcutta, 1896. 



LITERATURE CONSULTED 233 

Crooke, W., Popular Religion and Folk-lore 
of Northern India, London, 1896. 

Crooke, W., Natives of Northern India, Lon- 
don, 1907. 

CuRR, E. M., The Australian Race, 2 vols., 
London, 1886-7. 

CusHiNG, F. H., Zuni Tales, New York, 1902. 

D'Alviella, G., Hihhert Lectures, London, 
1897. ^ 

Dalyell, J. G., Darker Superstitions of Scot- 
land, Edinburgh, 1834. 

Dawson, J., Australian Aborigines, Melbourne, 
1881. 

Day, L. B., Folk Tales of Bengal, London and 
New York, 191 2. 

Decle, L., Three Tears in Savage Africa, 
London, 1898. 

Fergusson, J., Tree and Serpent Worship, 
London, 1868. 

Fewkes, J. W., See "American Ethnology." 

FiSKE, J., Myths and Myth-Makers, Boston, 
1872. 
\^ FisoN, L. and Howitt, A. W., Kamilaroi and 
Kurnai, London, 1880. 

Fletcher, A. C, See "American Ethnology." 

Frazer, J. G., Golden Bough,^ London, 1900. 
- Frazer, J. G., Golden Bough,^ London, 1905 fF. 



•^ 



234 ANIMISM 

(Includes Taboo and the Perils of the Soul; 

Dying God; Magic Art and Evolution of 

Kings; Spirits of Corn and Wild; Adonis, 

Attis and Osiris; The Scapegoat, and 

Balder the Beautiful.) 
Frazer, J. G., Belief in Immortality and the 

Worship of the Dead, vol. i., London and 

New York, 1913. 
Frazer, J. G., Psyche's Task, London, 1909. 
Frere, Mary, Old Deccan Days, London, 

1868. 
Frobenius, L., Voice of Africa, London, 1913. 
FuRNESS, W. H., Home Life of Borneo Head 

Hunters, Philadelphia, 1902. 
Gomes, E. H., Seventeen Tears among the Sea 

Dyaks of Borneo, Philadelphia, 191 1. 
Granger, F., Worship of the Romans, London, 

1895- 
Griffis, W. E., Mikado's Empire, New York, 

1903. 
Grimm, J. L. R., Teutonic Mythology, 4 vols., 

London, 1882-8. 
H ADDON, A. C, Head Hunters, London, 1901. 
Hahn, T., Tsuni'Goam, the Supreme Being 

of the Khoi-Khoi, London, 1891. 
Halliday, W. R., Greek Divination, London, 

and New York, 191 3. 



LITERATURE CONSULTED 235 

Hamilton, Mary, Incubation, or the Cure 0/ 

Disease in Pagan Temples and Christian 

Churches y London, 1906. 
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Prolegomena to the 

Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge, 1908. 
\ Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis, Cambridge, 

1912. 
Hartland, E. S., Legend of Perseus, 3 vols., 

London, 1894-6. 
vHartland, E. S., Ritual and Belief, London 

and New York, 191 4. 
v-HoBHOusE, L. T., Morals in Evolution, New 

York, 1907. 
Hose, C. and McDougall, W., The Pagan 

Tribes of Borneo, London, 191 2. 
HowiTT, A. W., Native Tribes of South-East 

Australia, London, 1904. 
Im Thurn, E. F., Among the Indians of Guiana, 

London, 1883. 
Jahn, U., Die deutschen Opfergebrduche bei 

Ackerbau und Fiehsucht, Breslau, 1884. 
Jamblichus, Theurgia. 
Joyce, T. A., South American Archceology, 

New York, 191 2. 
Keller, C, Madagascar, Mauritius, and Other 

African Islands, London, 1901. 
KiDD, D., Savage Childhood, London, 1906. 



236 ANIMISM 

>/ King, L, The Development of Religion, A 

Study in Anthropology and Social Psy- 
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KiNGSLEY, Miss Mary, West African Studies, 

London, 1899. 
Kloss, C, In the Andamans and Nicohars, 

New York, 1903. 
La Flesche, See "American Ethnology.'' 
Lambert, Moeurs et superstitions des Neo- 

Caledoniens, Noumea, 1900. 
>^ Lang, A., Myth, Ritual, and Religion, London, 

1899. 
v Lang, A., Making of Religion, London, 1898. 
Langdon, S., Tammuz and Ishtar, Oxford, 

1914. 
Lange, a.. The Lower Amazon, New York, 

1914. 
Lejeune, p.. Relation du voyage de la Nouvelle 

France, Paris, 1636. 
^' Leuba, J., A Psychological Study of Animism, 

New York, 191 2. 
McDouGALL, W., Body and Mind, A Study 

and Defence of Animism, New York, 1911. 
Mariner, W., Account of the Natives of the 

Tonga Islands, London, 18 17. 
Mathew, J., Eagle-Hawk and Crow, London, 

1899. 



LITERATURE CONSULTED 237 

Menzies, a., History of Religion, London, 

1895. 

Miles, C. A., Christmas in Ritual and Tradi- 
tion, Christian and Pagan, London, 191 3. 

Miller, H., My Schools and Schoolmasters, 
Edinburgh, 1854. 
^ MiLLiGAN, R. H., Fetish Folk of West Africa, 
New York, 191 2. 

Murray, M. A., Ancient Egyptian Legends, 
New York, 191 3. 

Nates A Sastri, Story of Madana Kama Raja, 
Folklore in Southern India, Bombay, 1884. 

Neuhass, R., Deutsch Neu-Guinea, Berlin, 

191 1. 

Nezv Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, 13 vols., 

New York, 1906-14 (abbreviated NSH). 
Newton, H., In Far New Guinea, London and 

Philadelphia, 1914. 
NivEDiTA (Margaret E. Noble) and Coom- 

ARASWAMY, A. K., Myths of the Hindus 

and Buddhists, New York, 1914. 
Parker, H., Village Folk Tales of Ceylon, 

London, 1910-14. 
Parker, Mrs. K. L., Euahlayi Tribe, London, 

1905. 
^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, ed. J. G. 

Frazer, 6 vols., London, 1898. 



238 ANIMISM 

Petrie, W. M. F., Egyptian Tales, 2 series. 

New York, 1896. 
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 

LoeVs Classical Library , London, 191 2. 
Plato, Timaeus. 

Reinach, S., Orpheus, New York, 1909. 
Rhys, J., Celtic Folk-lore, Oxford, 1901. 
Rivers, W. H. R., History of Melanesian 

Society, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1914. 
Rogers, R. W., Cuneiform Parallels to the Old 

Testament, New York, 191 2. 
RoscoE, J., The Baganda, London and New 

York, 191 1. 
Salvado, R., Memoires historiques sur VAus- 

tralie, Paris, 1854. 
Sayce, H., Hihhert Le6lures, London, 1888. 
ScHLEGEL, J. B., Schlussel zur Eve-Sprache, 

Stuttgart, 1857. 
Seligmann, C. G., Melanesians of British 

New Guinea, Cambridge, 1910. 
Skeat, W. W., Malay Magic, London, 1900. 
Smith, W. R., Religion of the Semites, London, 

1894. 
Smith, W. R., Kinship and Marriage in Early 

Arabia, London, 1903. 
Smyth, R. B., Aborigines of Victoria, Mel- 
bourne, 1878. 



LITERATURE CONSULTED 239 

Spence, L., Civilization of Ancient Mexico^ 
Cambridge and New York, 191 2. 

Spencer, F. C, Education of the Pueblo Child, 
New York, 1899. 

Spencer, W. B. and Gillen, F. J., Native 
Tribes of Central Australia, London, 1899. 

Spencer, W. B. and Gillen, F. J., Northern 
Tribes of Central Australia, London, 1904. 

Spiegelberg, Demotische Papyri, Berlin, 1902. 

Steel, F. A., Tales of the Punjab, London, 
1894. 

Steel, F. A. and Temple, R. C, Wide-Awake 
Stories, Bombay, 1884. 

Stokes, M. S. H., Indian Fairy Tales, Cal- 
cutta, 1879. 

SwANTON, J. R., Jesup North Pacific Ex- 
pedition, 5 vols.. New York, 1900-12. 

SwYNNERTON, C, Indian Nights Entertain- 
ment, London, 1892. 

Talbot, F. A., In the Shadow of the Bush, New 
York, 191 2. 

Taplin, G., The Narrinyeri, Native Tribes of 
So. Australia, Adelaide, 1879. 

Taylor, R., Te Ika a Maui, London, 1870. 

Theophrastus, Chara^eres ethici, 

Thomas, N. W., Anthropological Report on 
the Ibo-Speaking Peoples, London, 191 3. 



240 ANIMISM 

Thurston, E., Omens and Superstitions of 
Southern India, New York, 191 2. 

Todd, A. J., The Primitive Family as an 
Educational Agency, New York, 191 3. 

Tremearne, a. J. N., Tailed Head Hunters of 
Nigeria, London, 191 2, and Ban of the 
Bori, London, 1914. 

Turner, G., Samoa a Hundred Tears Ago, 
London, 1884. 

Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture, 2 vols., new 
ed., London, 1903. 

Underwood, H. G., Religions of Eastern Asia, 
New York, 1910. 

Vinson, J., Le Folk-Lore du Pays Basque, 
Paris, 1883. 

Weeks, J. H., Among the Primitive Bakongo, 
Philadelphia, 1914. 

Weeks, J. H., Among Congo Cannibals, Phila- 
delphia, 1913. 

Werner, A., Native Races of British Central 
Africa, London, 1906. 

Westervelt, W. D., Legends of Maui, Lon- 
don, 1913. 

Wiedemann, A., Religion of the Ancient Egyp- 
tians, New York, 1897. 

WiLBERFORCE, B., Steps in Spiritual Growth, 
London, 1912. 



LITERATURE CONSULTED 241 

Wilkes, C, Narrative of the United States 

Exploring Expedition, New York, 1851. 
Williams, T., Fiji and the Fijians, London, 

i860. 
Williamson, R. W., Mafulu Mountain People 

of British New Guinea, London, 191 2. 
Williamson, R. W., The Ways of the South 

Sea Savage . . . Solomon Islands and . . . 

New Guinea, Philadelphia, 1914. 
Wood, J. D., Manners and Customs of the 

Native Tribes of South Australia, Adelaide, 

1879. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Absence of Soul from 

Body, 26, 45, 51 ff., 100 
Absentee soul, 51 fF. 
"Accident" and the primitive, 

30, 137 ff- 
iEneas, descent of, 198 
All Souls' Day, 187 
Allen, Grant, 29 f. 
Angelology, ancestry of, 99 
Animals and dreams, 23 

and soul, 19 fF., 86 fF. 

as persons, 87 fF. 

deceived by guile, 88 

rationality of, 19 fF., 88 fF. 

speech of, 90 fF. 
Animism as thought, 15 

definitions of, 7 ff., 14 

residua of 220 ff. 
Anpu and Bata, 54 
ApoUonius of Tyana, 209 
Approach to soul's home, 193 f. 
Artifects, life in, ff ff. 
Assumption of animal form, 

121 ff. 
Aston, W. G., 10 
Australians and totems, 8 f. 

Babylonia, Spirits in, 105 f. 
Barter and exchange, 209 
Birth, miraculous, 56, 124 

virgin, 124 
Body and spirit, 32 ff., 120 



Bogies, fear of, 225 

Book of Thoth, 55 

Breath and the soul, 26, 37 ff. 

Brett, W. H., 143 

Bridgman, Laura, and the 

soul, 39 
Buddha, 500 births of, 157 
Buddhism and future life, 223 
Bunce, Daniel, 139 

Carnac, Stone of, 73 
Catacombs, picture of soul in, 

41 
Ceremonial, complexity of, 216 
Character of Spirit, dualism 

of, lOI 
Christian eschatology, 183 
Circe, 127 

Clan feuds, results of, 136 f. 
Clouds as persons, 69 f. 
Communal factor in evolution, 

215 
Communities of souls, 191 ff. 
Complexity of ceremonial, 216 
Conception, means of, 124 ff. 
Confusion of primitive thought, 

8ff. 
Conservatism and ritual, 214 
evil of, 213 
rationale of, 212 
Continuance a universal belief, 

222 f. 



245 



246 



INDEX 



"Continuance" of Soul, 147 ff., 

155 fF., 222 f. 
Crocodile, object of deceit, 88 
Cult, significance of, 65 

Dante on the Soul, 38 

Dawson, J., 140 

Dead languages, ritual use of, 

214 f. 
Dead, presence of, desired, 194 

retinue of, in spirit world, 
192 
Death, and the soul, 22 ff., 26 ff. 

by violence normal, 135 f. 

not inevitable, 135 ff. 

not normal, 29 ff. 

through sorcery, 140 ff., 
184 f. 
Definitions of animism, 7 ff., 14 
Deity and the ordeal, 28 f. 
Demoniacs, 106, 115 
Demonology, ancestry of, 99 
Descensus Averni, 197 ff. 
Diminution of soul's vitality, 

157 ff. 
Discarnate soul, condition of, 

165 ff. 
Disease demons, 115 f. 
of thought, 89 
through ghosts, 179 
through witchcraft, 142 
Disposition of ghost, 168 f. 
Double, soul as the, 41, 80 
Dreams and the departed, 32, 
42, 149 
and the ghost, 171 
and the soul, 22 ff., 32, 42, 
149 



Dreams, of savages, 24 ff., 100 

souFs wandering in, 52, 100 

Dualism of Spirit character, 

lOI 

Early Belief in Future 

Life, 147 ff. 
Earth as mother, 67 f. 
Ecstasy, significance of, 107, 

174 ff- 
Eifigies at graves, 130 f., 192 
Egoistic point of view, 208 
Egyptian deities, transforma- 
tions of, 122, 128 
home of soul, 191 
Enterprises, spirit influence on, 

10 1 f. 
Epimenides and wandering 

soul, 53 
Eschatology, Christian, 183 
External souls, 45, 5 1 ff. 

Fainting and Soul's Ab- 
sence, 26, 51 f., TOO 

Fear and worship, 204, 207 

Fetishism, 79 

Feuds, results of clan, 136 f. 

Fire as person, 72 f. 

Folk-lore, significance of, 57, 
65 ff 

Food, animate, 80 
of souls, 167 

Footmarks of soul, 41 

Form of soul, 40 ff., 46, 165 ff. 

Foundation sacrifice, 176 

Frazer, J. G., 25 f., 125 

"Free" spirits, 97 ff. 
spirits, nature of, 102, 105 ff. 



INDEX 



247 



Future life a paradise, 193 
animistic conception of, 222 
early belief in, 147 fF. 

Ghost and Prediction, 170 fF. 

disposition of, 168 f., 176 fF. 

greed of, 169 f. 

in dreams, 171 

knowledge of, 170 

periodical return of, 187 

powers of, 169 f. 

wandering of, 185 
Ghost's temporary release, 185 
Ghosts and shamans, 175 

as helpers, 175 f. 

become demons, 161 

become vampires, 162 

death of, 150 f. 

duties to, 178 

inflict disease, 179 

maleficent, 176 fF, 

worship of, 180 
Gods die, 151 

Golden age beyond grave, 193 
Gomes, E. H., 142 
Granger, F., 24 
Gratitude as source of worship, 

207 
Grave and the soul, 184 f. 
Greed of ghost, 169 

Harrison, J. E., 8 f. 
Hartland, E. S., 13, 57, 70 
Head of deceased preserved, 

194 
Heiti-eibib, 151 
Hercules' descent, 198 
Hermes Psychopompus, 43 



Hermotimus and wandering 

soul, 52 f. 
Hezekiah and the soul, 189 f. 
Hirata, prayer of, 98 
Hobhouse, L. T., 9 f. 
Home of soul, 183 fF. 

soul variously placed, 187 ff. 
Human form of soul, 40 fF. 

soul in animals, 45, 54 

soul in trees, 58 
Humans, transformations of 

126 fF. 
Hunger of souls, 167 f. 

Idolatry, 211 
Illogicality, primitive, 28 fF. 
Immortality, desire for, 223 f. 
vs. continuance, 150 fF., 155 fF. 
Implements, worship of, 77 fF. 
Im Thurn, E. F., 14 
Inanimate objects and soul, 

12 fl^., 63 fF., 66 fF. 

things as murderers, 137 
Individuality vs. solidarity, 208 
Ingimund and Finns' souls, 

52 
Invisible nature spirits, 41 f., 

97 ff. 
Ishtar, descent of, 197 f. 
Izanagi, descent of, 197 

Jacob, Dream of, 5 fF. 
Jamblichus on dreams, 172 f. 
Joshua and the witness stone, 

Ka, the, 41, 80 

Kaaba, sacred stones of, 75 

Kabyles' trepanning, 11 



248 



INDEX 



Kenaima, 142 f. 

"Killing" of implements, 80 f, 

167 
King, I., 205 
Kingsley, Miss, 12 
Knowledge of ghost, 170 

Lang, A., 89 
Langdon, S., 6j f. 
Lange, A., 85 f. 
Lejeune, Pere, 13 
Leopard-man, 127 
Le Souef, A. A. C, 139 
Life token, S3 fF. 
Logicality of primitive thought, 
15 

Magic as Cause of Death, 
140 fF. 

in Far East, 192 

in transformations, 129 ff. 

vs. worship, 207 
Maleficent ghosts, 176 fF. 
Man a duality, 22 fF., 33, 120 

as measure of things, 62 
Materiality of soul, 46 f. 
Mating of different orders of 

being, 123 fF. 
Maui, descent of, 198 

transformation of, 121 
Menzies, A., 7 
Metamorphosis, 119 fF, 
Meteorites, divine, 6, 74 f. 
Miraculous birth, 56, 124 
Mountains as persons, 69 f. 
Mulgewauke, 99 
Multiple souls, 44 f., 54 



Murder by inanimates, 137 
Mutilated souls, 42 f., 166 

Negative Confession, magi- 
cal use of, 156 

Neohthic man, 11 

Neuhass, R., 141 

Newton, H., 140 

Numbers of "free" spirits, 
97 ff. 

Oak at Dodona, 84 
Obassi Osaw, 121 
Objects of worship, 210 fF. 
Ogre and separate soul, 54 
Old Testament, verification of, 

174 

Olympians, amours of, 123 
Ono and fox-wife, 123 
Ordeals, 28 f. 

Parity of Being, to, 12, 

61 fF. 
Paternity by lower orders, 

125 fF. 
"Possession" by souls, 173; by 

spirits, 106, 114 f. 
Power in relation to worship, 

206 f. 
Powers of ghost, 169 f. 
Prediction and ghosts, 170 fF. 
Presence of deceased desired, 

194 
Primitive consciousness un- 
integrated, 8 fF. 
fancy, 28 

thought logical, 15 
Progress from compromise, 216 



INDEX 



249 



Prophetic frenzy, 116 
Puberty ceremonies, 192 

Rainbow Alive, 76 
Ramayana, 56 
Reinach, S., 13 
Reincarnation, 157 fF. 
Residua of Animism, 220 flF. 
Respect and worship, 204 
Ritual and conservatism, 214 
Rivers as persons, 71 f. 

possess personality, 71 f. 
Rock, see Stone 
Rocks as deceased ancestors, 

159 
Rollright, stones of, 73 
Romanes, J. G,, 20 fF. 
Rupe, transformation of, 121 

Sacrament as Ordeal, 28 f. 
Sacred trees, 83 ff. 
Samu Yalo, 151 
Savages, dreams of, 24 ff. 
Sea as person, 70 f. 
Separable soul, 51 ff., 100 
Serpent in Genesis, 91 f. 
Serpent tribe, rationality of, 
92 
worship of, 92 
Shadow and the soul, 43 ff. 
Shamanism, III 
Shamans and ghosts, 175 
Skulls trepanned, 11 
Sky as father, 68 f. 
Sleep and the soul, 22 ff. 
Smith, W. R., 73 
Smyth, R. B., 139 
Snake worshiped, 4 f. 
Snakes as soul-bearers, 158 f. 



Social factor in evolution, 215 

relations with worshiped, 
205 ff. 
Solidarity vs. individuality, 208 
Sorcery, ill ff. 
Soul absent in sleep, 24 ff., 100 

and mutilations, 42 f., 166 

and "possession," 173 

and shadow, 43 ff. 

and the grave, 184 f. 

and the self, 39 

condition of, and bodily 
condition, 166 f. 

constitution of, 37 ff., 46 f. 

discamate, condition of, 
16s ff. 

discovery of, 19 ff, 

discovery of, important, 221 

disposition of, 168 f. 

form of, 40 ff., 46, 165 ff. 

form, transformation of, 166 

home of, 183 ff. 

human, in animals, 45, 54 

in things, 12 ff., 63 ff., 66 ff. 

invisible, 41 

mutilated like body, 42 f., 
166 

needs of, 167 ff. 

non-human forms of, 46 

several lives of, 150 f., 155 ff. 
SouFs affection for home, 184 f. 

footsteps traceable, 41 

home duplicates earth, 190 ff. 

life after death, 147 ff. 
Souls, food of, 167 

hunger of, 167 f. 

mobility of, 26, 45, 51 ff., 
100, 169 ff. 



250 



INDEX 



Souls, multiple, 44 f., 54 

voices of, 168 
Speech of animals, 90 ff. 
Spencer and Gillen, 140 
Spirit, also see Soul 
Spirit interpenetration by, 106, 
125 

world, varied character of, 
189 ff. 
Spirits as fathers, 124 ff. 

become gods, 7 

dispositions of, 108 f., 1 14 ff. 

kinds of, 109 f. 

mortal, no 

needs of, 107 ff. 

possession by, 106 

senses of, 108 

vengeful, 116 
Stone, divinity of, 5 ff., 73 ff. 

sentience of, 5, 73 ff. 
Subterranean home of soul, 

187 ff. 
Suma snake, 3 ff. 
Sun, human in form, 67 
Superhuman powers, behef in, 

224 
Superhumans and the human 

form, 121 ff. 
Superstition, 225 ff. 

Tammuz and Ishtar, 197 
Taplin, G., 140 
Thoth, book of, 55 
Thought, "disease" of, 89 
Thunder a person, 70 
Tiger, object of deceit, 88 
Todd, A. J., 126, 213 
Tools, worship of, 77 ff. 
Toothache, cure of, 4 



Totems, 62 f., 89, 126 
Transformations, 91, 121 ff., 

126 ff., 156 ff. 
Transmigration, 157 ff. 
Tree and human soul, 58 

as oracle, 84 
Tree planting at birth of 

child, 57 f. 
Trees punished for murder, 137 

sacred, 83 ff. 

souls of, 83 ff. 
Trepanning, neoHthic, 11 
Tylor, E. B., 7 f. 

USHABTIU, 130, 192 

Vampires, ghosts as, 162 
Vegetable world, soul in, 83 ff. 
Virgin birth, 124 
Voices of souls, 168 

Wakonda, 62 
Were-wolves, 127 
Wilberforce, Basil, 61 
Wind as animate, 69 
Witch as wave, 129 
Witches, 114 f. 
Wizardry, in f., 114 f. 
Worship, 203 ff. 

anthropopathic origin of, 
203 ff. 

a quid pro quo, 209 

implications of, 203 

not due to fear alone, 180 

objects of, 180, 210 ff. 

of ghosts, 180 

of implements, 77 ff. 

of stone, 5 f., 73 ff. 
WuUunqua, 99, in 

Yaka, no, 161 



